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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There has never been so incompetent a bunch of imperialists as our leaders, except possibly the Germans that they resemble. If you are going to do it, do it right.
I agree with Dr. Wilson. Maybe in the days when our leaders still pretended to lead a Republic we could laugh at Maxwell Smart and Gomer Pyle. But if you are going to pretend to rule the world you must learn to use piano wire as well as the bunker buster and impose your will always and everywhere even while standing like a field surgeon with blood up to the knees.
Sadly there are multitudes of Allen's ilk funded by our tax dollars, and the Fed printing press. They are working in tandem with the Federals among us. Follow the money of the Department of Homeland Tyranny. I hope Pakistan will not relent.
Diplomatic immunity is for diplomats, not mercenaries.
Mr. Davis should be prosecuted by the Pakistani courts regardless of his citizenship status for alleged crimes committed in Pakistan. Why should the US taxpayer foot the bill for a court case and possible (not likely) imprisonment here. The US has very little prestige left in that part of the world precisely because of people such as Mr. Davis.
If that is even his real name.
There are two points at issue, one dealing with justice and the other with US interest. My own point was mostly satiric. Matej has very valid points.
"There has never been so incompetent a bunch of imperialists as our leaders, except possibly the Germans that they resemble."
So, does Clyde Wilson believe that the American Power Elite is racist and anti-Semitic? or is he making a lighter charge, only comparing Washington to the Kaiserreich?
Regardless, of all the adjectives I'd choose to characterize both regimes, "incompetent" is not one of them.
It's amusing to consider that Wilson spent his life as a professional historian.
Well Mr. Gast, I can see one way in which neoconservative Americans resemble imperial Germans.
For one thing, imperial Germans led an expedition where they started killing African tribals in large numbers to clean up a place that they could call a colony. Why did they engage in such a wasteful, petty, and disastrous venture (let alone a deeply amoral one)? Because they wanted to show off and make a name for themselves. Show imperial Britain that they could too make a colony.
Of course, the Kaiser probably wasn't so bad a person that he condoned killing of Africans, but more likely clueless enough to keep a loose leash on dangerous people, and then moving on and ignoring the incident once it comes to his attention out of apathy or shame.
Such recklessness, irresponsibility, and malicious failure resembles closely what United States has done in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years.
Thanks Mr, Sanjay. Who said anything about racism? German blundering in dealing with occupied people is well documented, beginning with all the imported squarehead bullies in the Northern army 1861-1865 and extending steadily to recent times.
#6 Your final personal remark about being amused is just the kind of nasty contribution that is not needed in a discussions here and reveals your character plainly.
I hired a contractor last year to renovate a bathroom. Not once did he draw a weapon and shoot anything or anyone. At what point did hired guns start being referred to as "contractors"?
I don't want to permit this discussion to turn into the usual pointless exchange of polemics. I wonder if "Peter Gast" is a Nietzschean pseudonym behind which lurks an aspiring National Socialist with pretensions to irony. Or perhaps he has merely failed, unintentionally, to express himself with the clarity and courtesy we expect from visitors to this site.
#9
Dr. Wilson,
This observation concerning what is amusing about professors and a lifetime study of history, reminded me of my old Milton professor who was instructing our class one morning about comedy always possessing a beginning, a middle and an END. He took a long pause, looked over the multi-cultural group of students dressed in rags, slouching toward Gommorah in their chairs, their hearts and minds and then said,
"Because if this goes on forever, kiddies, it ain't funny!!"
The US Empire is now in the business of promoting affirmative action and multiculturalism in France. Apparently, France isn't left-wing enough for the US State Dept.
America's "Minority Engagement Strategy" in France, from Wikileaks:
"In keeping with France's unique history and circumstances, Embassy Paris has created a Minority Engagement Strategy that encompasses, among other groups, the French Muslim population and responds to the goals outlined in reftel A. Our aim is to engage the French population at all levels in order to amplify France's efforts to realize its own egalitarian ideals, thereby advancing U.S. national interests. While France is justifiably proud of its leading role in conceiving democratic ideals and championing human rights and the rule of law, French institutions have not proven themselves flexible enough to adjust to an increasingly heterodox demography. We believe that if France, over the long run, does not successfully increase opportunity and provide genuine political representation for its minority populations, France could become a weaker, more divided country, perhaps more crisis-prone and inward-looking, and consequently a less capable ally. To support French efforts to provide equal opportunity for minority populations, we will engage in positive discourse;
set a strong example; implement an aggressive youth outreach strategy; encourage moderate voices; propagate best practices; and deepen our understanding of the underlying causes of inequality in France. We will also integrate the efforts of various Embassy sections, target influential leaders among our primary audiences, and evaluate both tangible and intangible indicators of the success of our strategy."
"France suffers consequences when its leading institutions fail to reflect the composition of its population. We believe France has not benefited fully from the energy, drive, and ideas of its minorities. Despite some French claims to serve as a model of assimilation and meritocracy, undeniable inequities tarnish France's global image and diminish its influence abroad. In our view, a sustained failure to increase opportunity and provide genuine political representation for its minority populations could render France a weaker, more divided country. The geopolitical consequences of France's weakness and division will adversely affect U.S. interests, as we need strong partners in the heart of Europe to help us promote democratic values."
As many bloggers have pointed out, the USA is the vanguard of the revolution.
http://www.wikileaks.fi/cable/2010/01/10PARIS58.html
In the Davis case, the legal point at issue is whether or not he has diplomatic immunity. As I understand the situation, this status cannot simply be claimed by the US government but has to have been accorded by the government of Pakistan, when it issued him a visa. If it did so, then Davis could be a mass murderer but still must be released. But if such a visa exists, why has the US government not produced a copy?
Sorry to post something slightly off topic, but the above "smoking gun" (the wikileak) is yet another example America's crazy foreign policy. When the next riots occur in France and US officials are involved in a shoot out there, whose side will they be on?
We don't even know if Raymond Allen Davis is his real name.
That man is living in humiliating conditions right now. Before his food is delivered to him, a dog licks it. Perhaps that is not done to degrade, because the dog checks for poison in his food. But that's pretty awful.
On top of which, the wife of one of the men he killed committed suicide. Her last requests were to see her husband's death avenged. He is a marked man in Pakistan and many would want to kill him.
What was RAD thinking when he took upon a crazy job like this one?
Mr Sanjay, I would posit that RAD is either a psychopath who likes to kill and terrorise, or an intelligent and brave but gullible and deluded fool. Either way, he is - or was - quite a useful tool for the godless villains who rule us.
Just wait till they unleash such creatures on us here, then we'll see what 'democracy' really amounts to.
"We don’t even know if Raymond Allen Davis is his real name."
I've read that CIA operatives usually work under their real names and backgrounds (work history until the agency, college degrees, etc.). The agency believes that the fewer lies operatives have to tell, the more believable their identities will be.
In many respects, the CIA's history is but a chronicling of incompetence:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1558840/CIA-blunders-outlined-in-new-book.html
By the way, can any American shed light on why United States continues keeping dubious allies? Pakistan is one in a long line of many.
Iraqi forces once sunk the American ship USS Stark or something like that and what did the American government under Reagan do? Nothing. They pretended that nothing happened.
And when the same thing was done in the 1960s by a certain unmentionable Meditteranean country, Lyndon Johnson went along like nothing happened.
Now Pakistan, a beneficiary of billions of American dollars (a part of which probably leaks down to people who can use it to buy some weapons and cross over to the unguarded Afghan border), would for long remain a non-country and a non-government and would still be a threat to lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan. And when more lives are lost, there would be then a case for throwing moe billions of dollars at Pakistan.
I don't believe the cosmopolitan politicians at the top of Pakistan are anti-American or anti-Western. They probably don't want to see terror strengthened. But this is not their country. They don't run it. They stand in a giant government which is a mess of Punjabis, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Bosniak immigrants (not kidding), Balochis, and whatnot. Everybody has his own communal interest and cares little about the fictional entity called "Pakistan". They would all continue to do siphon funds into groups that would eventually get other Pakistanis killed, let alone Americans. I can just imagine Rice talking to Bush and telling him, "This is a failed state. Give them more money."
Mr. Sanjay. Why does the U.S. keep getting dubious allies? Because our rulers are incompetent smart alecks who are too stupid and self-preoccupied to see beyond their noses. They are incapable of thinking as they ought---what is in the longterm best interest of the real American people. Instead, they throw around power and blather about righteous missions, making themselves feel and look good. And no responsibility is ever exacted from them. In a normal, functioning government, an establishment that first built up Saddam Hussein and then went to war against him would have been sent home in disgrace long ago. A leader who was a real patriot and statesman would be focussed on avoidable errors that thrteatened the future of his people.
#ll Dr. Flemming and #12 robert - It might also be added that
A. Schopenhauer and C.G. Jung have long since been deceased.
Barbara,
I think I agree with you. As Walker Percy said, "We should be unhappy, because in so many cases only the unhappy realize the true order of the world and find the right solution to the problem of alienation: God."
robert, my favorite Percy character, Lonnie Smith, found the ultimate truth- God- although he was a cripple and confined to a wheelchair. Thank you for your post.
Derek,
Thank you. I have met and always admired men like Lonnie Smith. I have a lawyer friend who was on leave from Iraq and rolled his truck and became a parapalegic in that brief moment between the topsy -- turvy and the BANG! He was single fellow before the crash but the lucky sucker married the beautiful nurse who was his rehab therapist and 20 years later he still wears a smile as she helps him drink his cold beer. Life is so strange and good that wiser men than me have often and described it as a vail of tears.
Dr. Wilson @20. I agree with you that our leaders do not have a clue about what is in our long-term national interests. That's why they are at a disadvantage in addressing foreign policy issues like those in the Middle East and domestic policy issues like rampant immigration, our collapsing economy, and failed schools.
Mr Leaberry @23 & robert @24:
There is a young man where I work who has been confined to a wheel chair by an automobile accident after he returned from duty in Iraq. He also has not been embittered by the hand he has been dealt, instead being determined to not let his injury hold him back. He too has a wife and children. In addition, he has a motorized wheel chair and one of those lift-vans that let him drive himself to and from work, which gives him a large measure of independence.
My personal experience in matters of this sort is dated, but perhaps relevant.
During the long cold war, it was customary for US, UK, Soviet, and Soviet Bloc countries to send their officers abroad under diplomatic cover. It was not difficult for the counter intelligence agencies concerned, taking advantage of the head start, to identify who were the spies, who were the diplomats, who were the coopted diplomats. Diplomatic cover made the collection of intelligence comparatively safe but correspondently difficult. Hence there were 'illegal' operations, using people to conduct 'black' operations under other types of Visa which were comparatively dangerous but more difficult of detection by the opposition. In other words, you took your chances and if you got caught, your hope was that someplace down the line somebody from the other side got caught and you got out of jail on a trade.
Diplomatic passports and diplomatic visas were normerly held only by people with at least a superficial claim to being diplomats, in the service, pay, and under the supervision of the responsible government which was responsible and accountable for the diplomat's behavior.
It is quite easy to understand how the government of Pakistan is having problems trying to determine how to justly deal with the Davis case. One would be very naive not to allow for the liklihood that the Davis fiasco was not an intelligence operation gone bad and to have serious questions what Davis's actual employment status is even vis a vis the CIA with respect to training, employment longevity, etc. I doubt very much whether he held a Diplomatic passport, which is not to say one will not be produced, and I am certain that he is entirely unknown to anybody in the Pakistani diplomatic community who could claim experience with him as a diplomat.
All in all, given the cowboy nature of the adventure we are on in Pakistan, I would say that this was an entirely predictable snafu; the yield, whatever they were contemplating, almost certainly was not worth the risk; and what was achieved in the end was a high grade Ugly American Moment. It reminds me in some respects of the ridiculous Mossad operation in Dubai with the difference being that the Mossad achieved their limited objective while advancing their country's status as an international pariah and exposing itself simultaneously as a bunch of bumblers.
Thanks, Jim Dooley, for the excellent and relevant observations. I may not have made it clear enough in my own remarks that I am not taking a high moral tone in condemning the use of diplomats in intelligence work or the introduction of intelligence agents under the cover of a diplomatic passport. Every game has it rules and techniques, but one of the rules that apply to this case is the necessity of a Pakistani visa acknowledging the status of Raymond Davis.
I am inclined--with all due respect--to disagree with Dr. Fleming's analysis. To be sure, until about a year ago, I loathed Blackwater and all that it stood for, based on what I had read about it in the newspapers. But then I read Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels. I believe these novels portray the reality of covert operations very well. Covert operations are not the bullying of the innocent, but a kind of preemptive strike against evil people. The thing can be abused, obviously, but "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater." I suspect the Obama Administration does not encourage CIA counter-terrorism, and Mr. Davis might have to rely for escape from torture on his fellow ex-Special Forces operatives who chose to ignore political instructions that endanger their fellow Americans. The real trouble, as Mr. Flynn makes clear, is not just that most politicians are conforming careerist hacks, but rather that they live in a comfortable, predictable civilian world where safety is taken for granted, even when they pay lipservice to the need to remain vigilant.
By the way, author Flynn despises most politicians, especially those in Congress. Chronicles readers will find his take on politicians to be strikingly candid and accurate--not always easy to do, given the literary danger of caricature.
That said, I have no sympathy for the idiot "contractors" in Iraq who killed innocent Iraqis. The first rule of covert operations is to draw no attention to yourself--to get in and out rapidly. The reckless daylight killings of Iraqis I assume were done either by amateurs or criminal elements. Neither type of bum should be a special operatives agent. I will assume, until it is proved otehrwise, that Mr. Davis is a consummate professional and a good guy who ran into bad luck--or was betrayed.
I have made no judgments on Mr. Davis as a man, but I cannot imagine why a pop novelist without intelligence experience can be taken as evidence of any kind. Saying Vince Flynn makes anything "clear" is on par with reviews of Saving Private Ryan that included the statement that now we know what WW II was really like.
I have known a number of people in various intelligence and police services, and I have a good deal of respect for some of them. However, agents are agents, that is, they are tools of someone else who makes decisions whom they kill. This presents some pretty obvious moral problems. The one fiction writer who claims to have carried out assassinations was Ian Fleming, and his own description of murdering a German agent on American soil made him a good candidate for the death penalty in this country. Fleming, at least, was working for his country's intelligence service. A private contractor is not a patriot but a mercenary, and having had direct experience of a much lower level mercenary--an ex-cop who ran a private security agency, I can tell you you don't want to deal with these people. They almost murdered my son, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they did handcuff and virtually kidnap him. To forestall the obvious lawsuit, they trumped an absurd car that he tried to enter their vehicle--he knocked on the window of what he thought was a private car in order to ask for directions--and secured a conviction. One of the agents came to the house and was profuse in his apology, indicating the charges would be dropped. When they were not, I called the head of the firm. He boasted--quite accurately, as I found out--of his tight relations with both local cops and the FBI, who would go to the wall to protect him. Let us drop this fictional garbage and get back to reality.
Is this issue being over-analyzed? "Robbery" requires the use or threat of force. The threat does not end merely because the robber might be "escaping". Robbers have a nasty habit of returning to the target. Robbers deserve to be shot- whether in Rockville, Illinois or Karachi, Pakistan. And spare me the disgusting hypocrisy--do you dare imagine any Pakistani being jailed for this utterly common experience in murder capital of South Asia? Well....anyone with pull. I doubt Davis did this for sport.
I think Vince Flynn portrays the reality, but if I'm wrong, I will need to be convinced. I don't assume our government is filled with incompetents.
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. And in exchange for killing a few foreigners (all of them "bad"), the contractor's criminal record back in the Homeland can magically be wiped clean.
William, with all respect, most of our politicians, journalists, entertainers, etc. have a background of "low-life drifters" far more evident than the "contractors" I have known and still work with to this day. The term "scapegoat for empire" comes to mind when I read these attacks. Someone else started a war that others, many from the South, are asked to win.
Two arguments I don't understand: 1) trust a novelist unless proved untrustworthy and 2) trust the unproved statement of a lying government. By the way if you shoot a fleeing wouldbe robber in Illinois you are going to do time and with good reason. It is perfectly possible these guys had robbery on their mind but rsn away from a heavily armed man. If that is what happened, the foreign agent is little better than the deer hunter who plants corn in front of his stand. Once again I am awe-struck by the American "mind."
I'm pretty certain that Mz Rodham greatly deplores the situation and is demanding full civil rights during the upcoming trial. But, what does she know, and when did she know that Davis is a mercenary who set out to whack some crooked smack dealer for a dope burn, during which several million New York $$$ suddenly appeared in al Qaeda bank accounts.
Yup. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
" Covert operations are not the bullying of the innocent, but a kind of preemptive strike against evil people."
I will assure you from experience that government bureaucracies are most fallible in sorting out the evil doers deserving of summary punishment from run of the mill evil doers such as ourselves. It is the reason that habeas corpus, due process, and trial by jury, imperfect as it is, are such wonderful devices. We do not extend these protections overseas but our fallibilities remain the same. Our miscarriages multiple accordingly.
The militarization of American law enforcement is not something to be welcomed. Swat teams and the like in most jurisdictions are little time bombs waiting to go off. For the most part they represent self selected supermen, without judgement, without patience, without experience and without enough to do. The zeitgeist of law enforcement and intelligence work is now almost entirely informed by media as opposed to the other way around. I can think of no reason why the public accepts, indeed demands this mutation, other than that it has informed its expectations in the same lamentable way. It is in the nature of the work to expect debacles; when the model is hollywood, expect the debacles to multiply.
As for private security, private eyes, security contractors, bounty hunters, I can only say expect the very worst. Their first allegiance is to the dollar; in the world as it is, even governments have a tenuous relationship with the law, as we well know. The security industry is a parasite: it pretends to be the real thing but it it isn't, and even the real thing is quite bad enough.
# 7 Mr. Sanjay:
In reply to Mr. Gast's remarks, you hit the nail squarley on the head. A reply in full.
When my (paper) Chronicles arrives in the mail, I typically read Dr. Fleming's article first. I also enjoy his e-coloums better than most other editors or contributors. So, sad to say, I am afraid that this one is not his best, certainly not in the top 20. I tend to agree with a previous commenter in that we seem to over-analyze this event.
I have also noted that a fair number of commenters tend, at times, to be a little more sympathetic with the non-American side or point-of-view of an argument than with the American one. I understand that many view the current US government as untrustworthy, but how could the Pakistani government be more trustworthy? Why would one "hope Pakistan will not relent."? Fiat justiae periat mundi? I do not think this is realistic. And besides, why should we not care of what happens to Davis? Is he not an American and as such closer to us than the Pakistanis? Is it not normal, as a first reaction, to side with your fellow countrymen when opposed to non-Americans? Sure, he may be a "bad" American, but we do not know at this point in time.
Let me add that I do not mean any disrespect for Dr. Fleming or any of the commenters. On the contrary, I admire Dr. Fleming for his knowledge and ideas and "Morality of Everyday Life" is one of my favorite books. I come to this site knowing that I have much to learn from its editors and, many times, from the comments section.
I agree with Mr Dooley. I used to know an old ex-cop who had great misgivings about the existence of SWAT teams, for many of the same reasons. He also said that they really were not needed.
As for the contract types, bounty hunters, security contractors, et cetera, any cursory knowledge of mercenary history should dispel any delusions. Even just Anthony Mockler's old book, 'The Mercenaries' is enough. My favourite story is of 'Col'. Jeremiah Puren and the Biafran national treasury. Goodbye, Biafra!
"Fiat justiae periat mundi? I do not think this is realistic. And besides, why should we not care of what happens to Davis? Is he not an American and as such closer to us than the Pakistanis? Is it not normal, as a first reaction, to side with your fellow countrymen...?"
It is possible, if I knew all facts and circumstances, that I'd salute Davis as a hero; at one time, roughly corresponding to my days of youth and greater ignorance, my presumption would have been just that. Given America's disgraceful policy of "perpetual global war for peace", I now tend to see America's agents abroad as the witting or unwitting tools of evil rulers; till proven otherwise, I honestly believe that they are just that.
Let's just hope that the felony-hit-and-run vehicle contained only accredited diplomats, also doing God's work to defend our republican values and way of life.
@ 36 Jim Dooley wrote:
"The militarization of American law enforcement is not something to be welcomed. Swat teams and the like in most jurisdictions are little time bombs waiting to go off."
Indeed. The militarization of our L.E. is of great concern, and ignorantly abstract to many Americans.
For the benefit of Mr. Williams and Doda Pilli who seem to have missed the point, I am going to recapitulate the point of what began as a lighthearted satire. The facts in the case are in dispute, but the legal and ethical issues should be clear to ordinary Americans if not to the writers of spy thrillers. Mr. Pilli appears not to have read my initial post in which I made it clear that "there is never any reason to believe anything emanating from official sources in Pakistan."
First the facts. According to the US gov, Davis has diplomatic immunity and shot two Pakis who tried to rob him. According to the Paki police, he shot the two men as they fled. There is also some confusing information about possible revenge. According to Davis, on tape, he had no official connection with the embassy but was only a contractor.
The legal case hinges on whether or not he has diplomatic immunity. As I understand the question, the US cannot simply claim immunity; Davis should have a diplomatic visa from the Paki government. If he does, he must be immediately returned to the US where he may or may not face charges. I argued above that just to show the Paki government we mean business, we should, even without legal justification, demand his return.
The ethical case depends, of course, on the facts and not on a priori and abstract arguments. If Mr. Davis is a contract killer, as he may well be, and either killed two would-be robbers as they fled or killed people seeking revenge as they fled, then the issue has nothing to do with whether we prefer Americans to Pakis. Frankly, when I read some of the responses here I am no more comfortable with some of my fellow Americans, who appear to justify illegal homicide on the grounds that a) the killer is American and the victims dirty foreigners or b) we all have a natural right to kill robbers fleeing the scene.
Diplomat or not, Mr. Davis is in Pakistan as a visitor or guest. Good manners suggests that we do not shoot up foreigners in their own country unless we absolutely must.
Davis is a mercenary, hired presumably to do jobs so dirty (mirabile dictu) the CIA doesn't want to handle. His actions are in aid of a policy and a government that has created for the second time a massive and destructive civil war in Afghanistan and in pursuit of that war has sent bombing missions and drones that inflicted serious damage on the civilian populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We, not the Pakis, are the aggressors, and the moral ball is in our court not theirs. Our status is roughly that of the practical joker who uses someone else's life as the staging ground for his joke. If something goes wrong, it is the joker's fault. If Mr. Davis turns out to be the shoot-first-and-ask-questions letter type in which his former employer Blackwater specialized, then the blame attaches to him and to the government that has employed him.
The arguments being made against my squib seem to be as follows: In any conflicts between Americans and foreigners, the American gets to kill the filthy foreigners. This is either because our country is a city on a hill and a beacon to the nations or just because that is the way we want it and it is the way people generally behave. To the former argument, I would respond that Americans have been crying "Glory glory halleluja" for 150 years and all they have got is a government that is as quick to subjugate us as it is to kill foreigners. To the latter argument, just don't whine if someone objecting to your line of reasoning shoots you in a preemptive strike against evil. That's just the way it is, dog eat dog, etc etc.
I neglected to say something about the most troubling aspect of such cases: the use of contract security agents. It is a common libertarian argument that prisons and security forces should be privatized. It is at this point that a normal person should be able to smell something rotten. If there is such a thing as a community or a society, then the right to punish and kill belongs to the group and not to the individual except in societies in which vendetta is an approved instrument of justice. When punishment and incarceration are contracted out to private firms, any abuse that is committed by profit-seeking companies is unjust, not simply because this or that employee did wrong but because the power of justice was given to private persons to abuse. 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. It is all very cute to make movies about rogue cops and people going beyond the law for just reasons, but neither Dirty Harry (a film I much admire, by the way) nor Charles Bronson in Death Wish have been extralegal authority from the government. In Harry Callahan's case, he is a good cop and a decent person who is prevented by corrupt authority from properly carrying out his job; in Death Wish, the hero merely exercises his right to walk the streets. He does not go into Harlem looking to provoke trouble. He simply exposes himself to the ordinary risks of life in NYC, and when hoodlums attack him, he defends himself. Imagine if Bronson went to Mexico pretending to be a drug buyer just to find an opportunity to kill Mexicans--that would be quite a different story, particularly if he were paid to provoke the attack.
"The arguments being made against my squib seem to be as follows: In any conflicts between Americans and foreigners, the American gets to kill the filthy foreigners. This is either because our country is a city on a hill and a beacon to the nations or just because that is the way we want it and it is the way people generally behave. To the former argument, I would respond that Americans have been crying “Glory glory halleluja” for 150 years and all they have got is a government that is as quick to subjugate us as it is to kill foreigners. To the latter argument, just don’t whine if someone objecting to your line of reasoning shoots you in a preemptive strike against evil. That’s just the way it is, dog eat dog, etc etc."
There would probably also be another connection between subjugating foreigners and subjugating one's own people. It starts with building military bases in another country and helping the regional leader kill local dissidents. The local dissidents fail to fight their enemy in their own country. Thus, they are forced to take the battle to the enemy's country. As we all saw with the Times Square Bomber. Then afterwards, seeing that enemies abroad have inflitrated home, the local authorities must now start weeding them out from their own citizenry and put them to rigourous checks and pat-downs. In the long-run, the treatment of domestic citizenry slowlu starts to equalize with treatment of occupied foreigners. The war brought abroad is brought back home.
Perhaps the biggest reason to be concerned about a contractor shooting down two Pakistani men is that such contractors are capable of bringing back such attitudes home.
Ron Paul, who otherwise can say some zany things, was probably right that innocents murdered by flamethrowers in Waco was merely a logical outcome of a government doing to its own people what it was practicing abroad for years.
Mr Sanjay, General Lee said after the war that because of the victory of the federal government over the states and the concentration of power in Washington, the United States was bound to become 'despotic at home and aggressive abroad'. In his mind, the two were inseparable, as is always the case.
You cant have one without the other, unless your despotic country is too small and weak to be aggressive abroad. It's no coincidence that the great European empires came in to being only after much centralisation of government power and the disappearance of most small states in Europe itself.
But getting back to the main subject, why do they need independent contractors anyway? Why not just use traditional government spies and agents? They cant be any cheaper, and obviously, at least in this case, they're not any better.
I happened to see only the first report and I didn't know Davis shot two men who may have tried to rob him. That changes everything, of course. But let's not leap too quickly to conclusions. All kinds of intricate scenarios are possible in that world of skulduggery and danger, and the government would be foolish to tell the public what its counter-terrorist people are doing, even when they are caught. Talking would compromise sources and reduce the ability of counter-terrorists to handle their affairs in the future. This incidentally answers Dr. Fleming's (2) in #34. Answering (1) would take far more energy than I have right now. Something along the lines of: just ask whether an author seems to you to be well-informed and unbiased and whether his plots have the ring of truth. From Ian Fleming I get no real sense of how the espionage world works, from Graham Greene quite a bit more, and from Vince Flynn (though no literary peer of theirs) still more.
Mr. Wilson (#41),
You can get a good idea of the need for, or at least the usefulness of, private contractors from Vince Flynn's books. Whether Flynn's understanding is one-sided is something I can't judge, but I tend to trust his account based on my general knowledge of the way the world works, and especially my years spent at the Justice Department, where I met some very fine people--not at all a bunch of morons and parasites, an experience that leads me to think our government cannot be all that craven. (My boss was the guy who discovered Oliver North with his hand in the cookie jar and told the AG, who told the supposedly incredulous President.) Despite this, I would say Flynn's generally unfavorable description of Justice Department lawyers and their motivations is pretty accurate. That is, the imperatives of the rule of law, if given full rein on every single damned occassion, can very seriously hamper efforts to fight really bad people who care not a whit for the rule of law or the moral standards of civilization.
@45 Allen Wilson wrote:
But getting back to the main subject, why do they need independent contractors anyway? Why not just use traditional government spies and agents? They cant be any cheaper, and obviously, at least in this case, they’re not any better.
It's not cheaper, but it is easier for contractors to circumvent Congressional bureaucracy.
Vince Flynn's novels are entirely irrelevant to any serious discussion. Dismissing Fleming, who actually was an agent, and preferring Flynn, who has no direct knowledge or experience is absurd, but even if we reversed the positions, it would have no bearing on the matter. If you want a serious thriller novelist with experience, read John Le Carré. Enough said on this. S.B. is correct: the point is to evade not just bureaucracy but all law and morality.
I should not have included Mr. Williams' name in my remarks (42). His observation was relevant and intelligent. The blogosphere encourages rapid responses that are not always, at least on my part, fully responsible.
The deaths of 4 Pakistanis is a great tragedy. A wife of one of the two men committed suicide and another was ran over by the CIA arriving at the scene of the incident to help Raymond Davis. I wish Raymond Davis well, but he is not a diplomat. It is election season in Pakistan and no one wants to be seen as doing American bidding interfering with an semi- independent judiciary. Perhaps he can be released on a quid pro quo on drone attacks, but the Pakistani media is in a total frenzy mode. The Pakistanis may also be moving more towards the orbit of China with the deal on the port of Gwadar, in the highly unstable Baluchistan region, which hates the dominant Punjabis who control the upper ranks of the military.