Don't blame Blackwater

The security firm acts according to its contract with the State Department.

from the November 2, 2007 edition

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Hilo, Hawaii - One critical piece has been missing from the debate about Blackwater's behavior in Iraq. The security firm operates as should be expected – as an agent of the US State Department, which it is. It acts just as State has prescribed by contract. Giving the Defense Department (DoD) more oversight over Blackwater and other contractors in Iraq, a plan announced Tuesday, doesn't change that.

Since Blackwater was involved in a September shootout in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, the firm has come under intense criticism for what many call overaggressive tactics.

But the issue isn't an overly aggressive contractor. It's the State Department's zero tolerance for casualties of its employees in Iraq. Such an approach makes tragedies such as the September episode more common – and it marginalizes the lives of innocent Iraqis who just might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Placing so many diplomats and civil servants on nation-building assignments in the middle of a civil war has a high price – perhaps too high, as officials at State have finally started to acknowledge.

The US government appears to tolerate a certain number of casualties from the all-volunteer military. But civilian employees are a different story. Images of dead diplomats being dragged through Iraqi streets or videotaped beheadings of civil servants, it's assumed, would undermine already tenuous public support of the war.

The very branch of the US government charged with fostering relations with the Iraqi government and people is responsible for the behavior that has helped erode support from the Iraqi populace. The State Department Diplomatic Security Service set up aggressive rules for the use of force for its contractors in what's called the Mission Firearms Policy. These rules are more aggressive than those used by the military for its contracted forces. In fact, the Secretary of State's Panel on Personal Protective Services in Iraq recommended last month that these guidelines be amended to require basic assurances: "due regard for safety of innocent bystanders," "every effort to avoid civilian casualties," and only aimed shots – a nod to the fact that pointing and spraying rounds isn't explicitly banned.

Since 2005, Blackwater has conducted more than 16,500 protective security details under contract with the State Department. In 1 percent of these missions, Blackwater operators discharged weapons. The government officials that Blackwater was guarding were present on some portion of these missions and, at the least, were tolerating Blackwater's aggressive behavior.

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