When 007 is caught with a smoking gun,
What do you do? The is the question that everyone should have been asking from the first news of Raymond Allen Davis's arrest in Pakistan three weeks ago.
Mr. Davis, after shooting and killing two Pakistanis, was put under arrest. The US immediately demanded his release, claiming diplomatic immunity and insisting that he was only defending himself from robbers. Pakistani police officials said, almost from the beginning, that Allen shot the men as they were running away.
While there is never any reason to believe anything emanating from official sources in Pakistan, last week they did release a tape in which Davos disclaims any position in the embassy and describes himself as a private contractor. When it was revealed at the same time that he was heavily armed and that a vehicle sent to rescue him (after running over a pedestrian) also contained heavily armed men, the nature of his contracting business became clear. It is now generally understood that Davis, a former special forces soldier, was a contract security agent previously employed by Blackwater and now working for the CIA under diplomatic cover. Presumably the fact that he is a liar should be good enough for the government of Pakistan. Imagine if he had claimed to be a Catholic priest or the prophet Mohammed.
No one knows for certain at this point, but it is pretty obvious that Mr. Davis has been well trained to shoot first and ask questions later. Whether the men he killed were robbers, as he claims, or ordinary people involved in a feud, as has been claimed in Pakistan, is not all that important, particularly if they were shot trying to escape. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to run afoul of a private security agency working hand-in-glove with city cops or the FBI or CIA knows what sort of men are employed in this business. They go through the world with a chip on their shoulder and a license to kill. I speak from the experience of one of my sons.
Then, what do do? Frankly, I do not care what happens to Mr. Davis. He was paid to do a job and if he has to take the fall, he knows how to take it like a man. Unfortunately, the US has some prestige at stake, and our so-called allies in Pakistan have proved themselves extremely unreliable. The sissies at the Obama State Department, it seems to me, have no choice but to demand Davis's immediate release and to threaten military retaliation if our will is thwarted. That is how a responsible Great Power must behave. Bring Davis home and let him be tried by a jury of his peers. In the America Davis and his kind have been creating for us, that jury just might be made up of subcontinental Muslims who have fled the violence that the US has inflicted on their homelands.
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I should not have included Mr. Williams’ name in my remarks (42)
Thank you, Mr. Fleming; my puzzlement is resolved.
My apologies to Doctor Fleming (sometimes the little things do mean a lot).
I will let it rest, then. I'm more than happy to do so because my time will be taken up through 2012 with writing a book about global warming. Everything else is off the table for me for the next two years or so.
Regarding the art of imperialism, Dr. Wilson states that : 1. the Germans were a bunch of incompetent imperialists, and 2. "if you are are going to do it, do it right". If he were less right I could not agree with him more, and if he were more wrong I could not agree with him less. There was , after all, no excuse for the Germans to be incompetent imperialists- they had only to imitate the English. Imitation may be flattery, but not without drawbacks- all things considered , who would want to exchange and empire upon which the sun never sets, for a welfare state upon which the crescent moon will surely rise. No, better the Germans should have stuck to music and leave imperialism to their betters. What, after all, are the western Carolines compared to India, South Africa or Ireland.
As an aside , "the squareheads" I presume refers to the hybrid potatoes the English , in their generosity in dealing with occupied people , contributed to the Irish relieve Fund administered by Foulers.
Dr Fleming and S.B.: That's what I suspected, but the fact that the U.S. government is now claiming immunity for him made it a little confusing at first.
If I were going to use private contractors, they would go in understanding that they are being used because their association with me could be plausibly denied, and if they get in trouble, I wont know who they are, and forget about the CIA blowing cover by rushing in to rescue him and running over people. If it were me, even the CIA wouldn't know anything about it at all. But that's just my evil rotten little soul speaking, while the villains who rule us have other ideas.
Fascinating discussion.
Two points I would like to make:
1. Germans have not been incompetent imperialists. Their Imperial adventures in Africa and Asia might seem poorly-thought out, but that was because most of those territories had been carved up by their British and French rivals and so the Germans were not left with much to do except fume at their bad luck. On the contrary, the Germans have had centuries of years of experience of Imperial continental expansion eastward as German settlers moved east and the local Slavs were Germanified. And through the 1990s, we saw what was arguably a German-American condominium in Europe. "Leadership in partnership" was the term Bush the father used was it not?
2. Why does the US government use private contractors so much instead of government spies and assasins? First, because there is much less of a paper trail for the really dirty assignments. Second, since the US government has long since outsourced its actual decision-making power, why not its covert opts as well? Many writers at this site fulminate against the seeming mediocrity of those in formal US government positions. But those people are just executors and thus they do not need to be terribly creative. The real power is in the hands of New York high finance. If government officials serve this power well, they can look forward to pampered consulting and directorship positions after their government careers have ended.
#43 Dr. Fleming: As we know acting is a craft that is used by the
actors and their own appreciation of what they can do with a
character in a role in the story. As time goes on following any
actor, the roles they act out and what they live out or choose
in their own lives is what does make the difference in them as
persons. They have been placed as are we all in public view.
Some actors in their youth, have taken on various roles. It
brought to those that viewed them what ability they had in playing
the part. Time and later choices and events in their personal lives
changed them and the roles they would take in their careers. One
example would be the film A Few Good Men.
Just for the asking, however, have the facts and realty changed?
Or have the opinions.
Professor Fleming writes:
"Similarly, when private security firms take over the state’s power to protect, serve, and kill, the door is opened–deliberately in some cases–to private persons who will abuse the law and behave unjustly."
Precisely. They are neither fish nor fowl. In addition to the corruption and corrosion they cause within the legitimate organs of state power, their use gives rise to all kinds of confusion when things go wrong as appears to have happened in the Davis case.
The WSJ reports today that Davis had a diplomatic passport and some sort of expedited visa. The passport and visa should normerly be the end of it. It is not because Davis, caught out, is so obviously unconnected to anything diplomatic and perhaps, even likely, not even properly speaking, a CIA officer. It is this situation with which the Pakistani's are wrestling within the context of their own internal governmental department rivalries and an inflamed political situation.
During the cold war there was frequently considerable tension within embassies and missions between proper diplomats and CIA officers under diplomatic cover. The Ambassador was responsible for keeping relations with the host country stable and correct and intelligence operations have a nasty tendency to blow up. Accordingly, before the State Department became annoying junior to the Pentagon and the CIA, it did not issue diplomatic passports willy nilly on a shotgun basis, and never to my knowledge to someone who was not a bona fide member of the governemnt. This appears to have changed.
It is worth remarking that this case will make for a troublesome precedent. It is probably not a welcome development that governments and their intelligence services should be disabused of the notion that diplomatic passports require strict control.
Finally, this case also tells us all we need to know about prospects for any sort of enduring comity with Pakistan.
I think this discussion calls for a bit of rural wisdom:
"You mess with turds, your hands get dirty."
"One of the more disturbing aspect of US “contractors” is that, while some may have the skills and panache of 007, others are little more than low-life drifters who have a background one of the military combat arms"
I have been grossly unfair to Mr. Davis. The Telegraph is reporting that he was in fact the "acting head of the CIA in Pakistan". The next revelation, I suppose, will be that he is actually a graduate of Yale College.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8340999/Raymond-Davis-was-acting-head-of-CIA-in-Pakistan.html
Mr Scallon is precisely right. What in the world would any legitimate government need with private security contractors, private jailers, Blackwater, or individual contract agents like Davis?
No legitimate government 'of laws and not of men' would do it. Decent people would never do it. Real statesmen would never have their necessary intelligence work done by private contract thugs like these, any more than they would have their diplomatic work done by petty con artists.
William Williams @60:
If he was a contractor and not a direct government employee, Davis could not legally be the acting head of the CIA in Pakistan. That is inherently a government position and function that only a government employee can fill. (I recognize that you are being sarcastic or ironic in your comment.)
If an action or activity is illegal for a government employee to perform, it is also illegal for a government contractor to do it.
America will always be a lousy imperial power because our educated classes have no real interest in the Third World puppet states we own. Whatever one may think of men as different as Lawrence of Arabia and R. Kipling, they at least had a passing interest in the cultures of the colonal nations their governments ruled.
Jonathan @56, Germans as imperialists: In WW II millions of the peoples of the Soviet Union welcomed the Germans as liberators---until they learned better. If the Krauts had been possessed of a little flexibility, sense, and residual Christian values, instead of their usual arrogant, block-headed nihilism, they might still be there. By the same token, the Austro-Hungarian empire might have been a positive force and still exist.
Dr Wilson: I suggest you re-read chesteron's " the end of the armmistice " part 1; re-read belloc's "europe and the faith" ; and re-read weaver's southern essays part 3 - 1865 and 1871 seem to have much in common. There was a reality called Europe- it was in fact Cristendom. To this reality Germans belonged- Prussians did not.
I suppose it is a matter that there are Germans and then there are Prussians, as there are Americans and then there are Yankees.