Blackwater were fighting alongside American special-ops soldiers in Taliban country

It really does sound like neurosis

It is entirely possible, but—

—that really sounds like neurotic behavior.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Isn't that how the song went? Of course, for many, it's not a choice.

How much American television did (do) you watch? I only ask because I saw a couple of examples the other day on reruns of Criminal Minds. In one episode, Frankie Muniz played a comic-book artist intrinsically connected to serial killings in New York. As his relationship to the crimes emerged, it became clear that he was suffering beyond mere neuroses; he lived in denial of the external stressor that caused his behavior. The people around him, never sure quite what to think, simply would not sit him down, look him in the eye, and explain that his fiancee was dead. In another episode, a woman initially refused to acknowledge a crime committed against her because she was protecting something else entirely.

People do this frequently. We rewrite events in our minds to justify ourselves. We deny what we see in order to protect our interests. Over time, one need not make a conscious decision to behave that way.

You're familiar, I think, with my rants about my former girlfriend, the mother of my child. She can literally go from, "I never lie," to laughing about how she conned her way out of a traffic ticket, or into a club, or something like that as quickly as you or I can change the subject. But when she says she never lies, she believes it. The two aspects of her life seem to exist separately within her sphere of being. It is important to her to be viewed as an honest person. Sometimes all I wanted from her was an honest answer so that I could figure out what to do next. But she didn't want to give those answers because she is wrapped up in that American cutthroat way in which nobody simply is, but rather they are either good or bad, superior or inferior, and so on.

Or her father. In the wake of the infamous eighteen-hour diaper run and her (implicit) threat to shoot me, her father came to her defense, claiming that he had been following her around. He actually took notes, and explained how after six hours at the bar, she drove straight as an arrow.

So ... now, wait a minute. This family is dissolving because it doesn't have enough money; my partner's father is calling my mother, demanding to know what I'm doing with all the money, and six hours at the bar doesn't have anything to do with it? The thing is that his Christian ego could not accept the idea that his daughter was not ... well, I can't figure out what exactly he was hoping for. I don't think he's so far gone as to believe she is pure and guiltless, but if the issue is where the money goes, his answer is that she didn't seem to be too drunk to drive. There is a basic disparity there.

To the other, there is simply me. Unlike most Americans, I dwell as consciously as possible in my neuroses. I'm not economically productive. I can't stand the lies and sleights of rhetoric I devise for convenience, and the dishonesty demanded by the workplace still befuddles me. (Really, part of the reason I fare so poorly in the job market is that I don't lie during job interviews.) I have literally committed what are, technically, illegal acts on behalf of corporate employers as part of my daily routine. And, certainly, working in the insurance industry taught me to distrust corporate types, as they were all lying most of the time, anyway. It drives me near to institutionally insane to be immersed in such environments. This is no way to live, either.

The underlying challenge, then, is to reconcile our noble aspirations with our conduct. But this is costly, whether we count dollars, or psyches and other human resources. I know what I want and a good deal of what I need to reconcile with society, but I'm also aware that such outcomes at least verge on impossible. Certes, I must find a better way, but that only helps me and the few people who keep me afloat in the world. All of us, together, in this nation and around the world, must find a better way; it should go without saying that this would help pretty much everybody.

The basic neurotic conflict is between our primal desire and civilized obligations. We cannot alter the primal beast, but there is much we can do to alter our expectations of civility. Americans are stuck in cycles of post-Zoroastrian dualism. Everything must be one or the other; nothing can simply be.

 

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How many more of "these bastards" do you think there are since the start of the "war"? How many have joined the fight since the occupations? The way I see it, every stray bullet, bomb, and missile hitting a non-combatant probably equals another half-dozen fresh enemies.
Well, and probably add in the fact of the occupation itself, no? That the longer a foreign force resides in YOUR country, the more likely you're going to eventually take up arms to push them out?

You're not supposed to ask THAT question!

In all honesty, I have no real idea what "the job" is either. I half wonder if the people at the top even have a clue...

 

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Tiassa:

You made a lot of good points but I'll address the ones I consider significant to the topic

How many times have you seen Blackwater operations discussed on mainstream American television? This is a major mercenary corporation that operates as an arm of the US army in all its current occupations. How many news articles in NYT, Washpo, CNN, MSNBC have interviewed Eric Prince?

But wait, we're jumping ahead, aren't we?

How many mainstream news agencies actually discuss the wars? How many Iraqi and Afghan women have you seen giving their opinions in these much vaunted liberation campaigns? How many Iraqi and Afghani men? Where is the accountability?

In my first month in the US, I was astounded by the utter lack of news [in favour of opinion] on US media. No one reports what is happening, everyone simply tells you what they think of it. Without [all] the facts in evidence, how is one to have an independent opinion on any subject?

e.g. Not one single US news agency I have ever watched has even mentioned [for example] that Osama bin Laden is not wanted for 9/11 because there is no hard evidence that he is involved in it [see most wanted list on FBI site]; not one has ever dissected the 9/11 report or interviewed all the people involved in it for their opinions. This is the biggest act of terrorism in the country. For comparison see the Indian media coverage of the 26/11 incidents in Mumbai and how they differ from US coverage of 9/11.

What is this primal desire? To whom is this civilized obligation? Who makes these choices?

 

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They are - especially to the employers of mercenaries, to whom they are not just waste but actual impediments. Expensive ones.

 

Why expensive?

 

REPLY: YOU thank your lucky stars there are men and women out there defending you against these bastards that would kill you for the fun of it. Was that attack on New York a pipedream ? Get real NOW. ...traveler

 

Er, I happen to be one of those who will chop your head kill you for the fun of it for throwing white phosphorus on my families. You could hardly blame me for not wanting an armed killer like you in my home.

 

Look at what it costs to hire mercenaries.

 

They are cheaper than US soldiers, and as such, can be utilized for some missions. My problem is that the growth of the industry occurred with little or no oversight and the mission-choice, and the responsibility for the consequences of those missions, seems not to have been very well thought out.

 

cheaper? your joking right? they get paid 3 or 4 times as much as our dough boys

 

Not per capita, and not if their support is accounted to their cost - not if the books are kept accurately, that is.

That's certainly giving their employers the great benefit of the doubt - the finessing of accountability, the greater ease of concealment, the deniability and carefully arranged ignorance, the greater flexibility in task and means out of the range of the public eye, can all be laid to lack of forethought and fortunate coincidence if that is somehow comforting, I suppose.

 

A pleasure principle

M'lady, I do not dispute any of that. Rather, I am suggesting something about the reason why it is the way it is.

Eat, sleep, excrete, reproduce. Most of what we do is either a complex version of that, or else a scheme to facilitate such outcomes. Wealth, for instance, however we measure it, empowers a person to do what feels good, as opposed to partake of unpleasant "necessities". If I'm a celebrity with a popular talk show on HBO, can afford to produce movies, and regularly get invited to high-profile events like being a guest on Larry King Live or Hollywood award ceremonies and after-parties, then I get to date supermodels. If I flip burgers at Mickey D's, I get to date Sheila, the drive-thru cashier. In the end, we want to feel good all the time. There isn't really a mystery about this. So if I've got nothing better going on, I'm going home with Sheila. And me, personally? Flip a coin. I've done the overweight, lonely girl at work. But I've also holed up in a strip club, spent more than I had, partied with porn stars, slept with strippers, and even once caused a scandal once by showing up at a Carrow's in the middle of the night with a barely-conscious dancer on my arm. What in the hell was the point of all that? Couldn't tell you, but it was sure as hell fun.

The primal desire is simply to feel good as much of the time as possible. In Freudian terms, extended childhood (compared to, say, other mammals) develops in humans an affinity for various pleasurable sensations that other animals don't have the time, or, in many cases, the capacity to intellectualize. Pleasure versus necessity.

The primal desire is what it is. The civilized obligation is to society. The choices are made slowly, over time at the societal level, and at various speeds and to diverse degrees at the individual, without any guarantee of conscious decision. Western ideas of civility, for instance, have transformed greatly since Victoria's day. For instance, children's fashions these days would have been beyond scandalous to Victorian sensibilities. Of course, behind all that proper façade, there would have been plenty who secretly adored such delightful sights. For instance, Crowley—among the twentieth century's most notorious hedonists—wrote of enlightenment, in 1898:

XXVIII.

Aubrey attained in sleep when he dreamed this
.....Wonderful dream of women, tender child
.....And harlot, naked all, in thousands piled
On one hot writhing heap, his shameful kiss
.....To shudder through them, with lithe limbs defiled
..........To wade, to dip
Down through the mass, caressed by every purple lip.

XXIX.

Choked with their reek and fume and bitter sweat
.....His body perishes, his life is drained,
.....The last sweet drop of nectar has not stained
Another life, his lips and limbs are wet
.....With death-dews! Ha! The painter has attained
..........As high a meed
As his who first begot sweet music on a reed.​

I mean, come on. I understand why he considered that period of his writing juvenile, but that is seriously repressed impulse. I've never heard that Freud wrote a critique of The Beast, but I really wish he had.

What you're seeing in Aceldama is a twenty-two year-old product of an obscure Irish sect—Exclusive (Plymouth) Brethren—an insane mother, and a youthful fondness for rye ergot, at least.

It's just an example, of course, but Crowley would develop an affinity over the years for women he thought were ugly because he believed that, knowing they were undesirable, those women would be more liberated in bed in order to keep their lover's attention. One can look at almost any point in his career and see him attempting to justify instead of repress his primal desires.

The highest meed, as such.
____________________

Notes:

Crowley, Aleister. Aceldama: A Place To Bury Strangers In. 1898. Kobek.com. December 15, 2009. http://kobek.com/aceldama.pdf

 

REPLY: So you are an Islamist are you ? Want to meet me ? ...TRAVELER

 

I usde to think that, too. You need to realize that their salary, easily seized on, is entirely immaterial. It's the tooth-to-tail of the US army that makes it so expensive. One depoloyed solider, according to the Times, costs about a million dollars per year. It costs a private security firm nowhere near that to equip a guy and put him in Afghanistan or Iraq, even if he is being paid double what the grunt is.

You also have to think in terms of short-term vs. long-term. Specifically, I had the man who secured the elections in Iraq talk to me about that contract. It was a three-month gig and he was given something like a month's notice before-hand, because the date kept moving. The US armed forces are not nimble enough to come in and do a temporary job like that. It would take them months to get the people and infrastruture in place. So the contractors can and do play a much needed role, the problem, as I stressed earlier, is in accountability and mission-choice.

Well, Sam. Prince does not have to grant interviews, but he did just grant one to Vanity Fair, and Tiassa posted a portion of it. Elsewhere, the NYT has had an article about Blackwater (now known as XE) in the paper just about every other week. Maybe your subscription ran out?

 

Trillion $ war on terror that never ends because of 3,000+ people dead on one day in september is equivalent to campaign to eradicate automobiles because of a hand full of children who get run over.

Why, in 2008, over 34,000 vehicular fatalities were recorded. All cars must be crushed immediately. Those bastards.

Yes. 3,000 deaths in September became multiplied many times over in the Afghan and Iraq wars, with a nice price tag for us to deal with. God Bless Amerika! That's true progress.

 

Because of opportunist contractors like KBR, I'm 99% sure.

 

bullshit the US military can do it fine. when my graddad was in WW2 we could, when my dad's friends were in nam we could, the navy sniper I knew believed we could. So are you telling me are military men and woman don't know what their capable of doing?

 

If a government needs a foreign militia to secure elections, should that government be in power?

I was asking about news articles. Care to tell me where Blackwater is operating in Afghanistan today and what their job is? Who is their man on the ground in these locations?

Why, are you coming to my country to impose your values with guns too?

Thanks, but we already have home grown fundamentalists of all religions, we don't need to import foreign Mindless Morons too.

 

The cost to the security firm is not the issue. The cost to the US taxpayer is the issue, and that involves a whole slew of support and setup and coordination overhead just as with a regular soldier. It makes no sense to prorate the helicopter gas unto the soldier, but not unto the mercenary sitting next to the soldier in the chopper. Likewise the rest of the infrastructure.

And "double" isn't the half of the pay scale difference.

The US military had a full scale assault operation launched on the other side of the planet, in Afghanistan, within four weeks of 9/11. It launched an invasion of Grenada within 12 days of the coup that motivated it.

 

What do you think the Afghani government would like in a year if the US pulled out tomorrow? Would there even be a government? Multiple governments? Maybe the best thing for that country would be to split into smaller states...

Thou art sassy.