Rogues Gallery?

January ~ Blackwater security founder Erik Prince.
Photograph by Nigel Parry.

January ~ Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein and C.O.O. Gary Cohn.
Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

May ~ General David Petraeus.
Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson.

It is funny how I discover things on the Internet. My nominee for the least charitable, most self-indulgent, resentful essay on photography ever is Ingrid Sischey's 1991 trashing in The New Yorker, of Sebastião Salgado.* It is a paper so incoherent, so devoid of plausible judgment, I've always wondered how the editors allowed it to see print.

Sischey, of course, has gone on to distinguish herself as editor of that bastion of serious thought and incisive commentary ~ Interview magazine. She now has ascended to the post of contributing editor at Vanity Fair. All this demonstrates that early failure is no barrier to success in the world of vacuous publishing ventures. It also establishes how easy it is to squander whatever meagre abilities you might have on thoroughly specious undertakings while still feeling justified in voicing sanctimonious criticisms of those who try, at least, to put their more substantial talent to productive use. I suppose that is the risk of swimming always in the shallow end of the pool.

I already have devoted enough time to Sischey here. So, . . . end of that rant. My point, in any case, is that for some reason my Google alerts flagged this interview with Sischey about what to do at Art Basel/Miami. And on the same page is a link to a photo essay: Vanity Fair’s Year in Review: January to June 2010. And that slide show is what I really wanted to talk about. How is that for circuitous?

The bulk of the VF half year review consists of pics of entertainers and their enablers (read Hollywood actors and directors). But, interspersed with tie sideshow, are the three images lifted here; they deserve comment.** We have, in order, rabid mercenary, rapacious financiers, and . . . well, everyone's hero, the good General David Petraeus. This seems to me to constitute a real slap at the General. Don't get me wrong, I've made it clear here more than once that I don't hold him in terribly high regard. But there are limits. Petraeus may be misguided, he may be committed to pursuing a losing policy in an authoritarian decision-making structure, but he is not a venal, ideologue like Prince or simply venal like the the boys from Goldman Sachs. That makes him culpable but probably not criminal. You cannot say the same of Prince, Blankfein, and Cohn. Apparently, our media have more or less completely lost the capacity to discriminate not just between the serious and the ephemera, but between between the honest (if deluded) and the crooks.

I have to say that one of the virtues of Blankfein and Cohn is that, as bald bankers, they deprived Leibovitz of the signature fan-induced, wind-swept hair that renders so many of her portraits formulaic.
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* If, after this characterization, you want to read it, you can find Sischey's essay reprinted in Liz Heron & Val Williams, eds. 1996. Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the 1850's to the Present. Duke University Press.

** All three images © the photographers noted in the Vanity Fair caption/credit.

Political Entrepreneurs

You may find it interesting to listen to my friend Henry Farrell on bloggingheads.tv discussing the "celebri-tization" of politics (among other things) with Dan Drezner. The conversation is prompted in part by Drezner's recent essay in the con/neo-con leaning National Interest ~ "Foreign Policy Goes Glam." I have weighed in on related matters here and here and here in the past and tend to agree with Henry on this issue. My sense is that Bono, Angelina Jolie, et. al. bring panache to the privatization of policy issues, nothing more. And if we find the underlying privatization dubious the panache is not redeeming. I do not think famine, epidemic, war & peace, etc. properly are matters of philanthropy. In my view Al Gore and his campaign and Bill Gates and his foundation and Erik Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries [1 2 3 4 5 6 7] all are privatizing and moralizing politics, both domestic and international, in highly dubious ways.

Our Mercenaries (Yet Again)

Photo © Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

Meet Erik Prince ~ rich kid, right-wing extremist, U.S. Navy vet, successful war profiteer, and Mercenary-in-Chief at Blackwater USA. I lifted this photo and the following graphic from this story in The New York Times reporting on the testimony Prince gave before a Congressional Committee today. It shows what stellar work Blackwater is doing for you and I in Iraq.

I am not partial to mercenaries like Prince and have made that plain here before (see this post and the links it contains). Today Prince complained that just because his employees are trigger happy yahoos we should not "rush to judgement" because they are working in a dangerous, stressful environment. A couple of things spring to mind. First, no one is making any of these guys take jobs in Baghdad. Second, they are a lot less stressed with no accountability for their actions than they will be if the Congress gets some backbone and starts to inquire into their activities. And third, they are making a ton of money shooting up the town.

Mr. Prince seems not to get it: given that Blackwater is in Iraq under contract to the U.S. Government, it it the duty of the Congress to judge the company's activities. Hence Prince was testifying today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Seems plain enough to me. My advice to the Congress is that it examine the inheritance laws because those are the main source of Prince's riches. He took money from Dad to launch his company even before he learned to take no-bid contracts from BushCo. That is the dire problem rich kids face ~ they don't have to work for a living. Instead they're forced get by on inheritance, neptoism, and corporate welfare. How unseemly!

All of that said, I always try to be fair. The graphic here is a bit misleading. First, Blackwater has many more employees in Iraq than the other big mercenary firms. So we might expect them to be involved in more 'incidents.' Second, Blackwater operates mostly in and around Baghdad and that too would likely inflate our expectations of their 'incident' proneness (is that a word?). So Blackwater may not be worse that the other mercenary companies we employ. Those points aside, the graphic indicates that our mercenaries were involved in 300+ shootings in a 28 month period. You do the math. And then notice that in more than two-thirds of those 'incidents' our mercenaries started the shooting. So, not being worse than the competition hardly makes Blackwater competent.

On that note the story in The Times reveals that several Republican Congressmen seemed sympathetic to Mr. Prince's predicament. He is, after all, a big time Campaign contributor. Among the concerned Congressmen was Patrick McHenry (R-NC). According to The Times reporter:

"Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina
elicited from Mr. Prince that 27 Blackwater employees
have been killed in Iraq, but no State Department staff
members. 'Your client is the State Department,' Mr.
McHenry said. 'The State Department has a contract
with you to provide protective service for their visitors.
And you’ve had zero individuals under your care
and protection killed.'"

Unfortunaately The story does not reveal that Blackwater is headquartered in North Carolina. And it provides no indication whether Rep. McHenry bothered to note the number of Iraqi civilians Blackwater employees had killed in establishing so fine a record. Dead Iraqis seem not to count in his calculations. Coincidently, the latest issue of The Nation arrived today with a cover article by Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater. Scahill notes:

"“[T]his is a four-year pattern that goes beyond Blackwater.
The system of "private security" being paid billions in US
taxpayer dollars has not only continued despite rampant
abuses; it has flourished. Blackwater and its ilk operate in
a demand-based industry, and with US forces stretched
thin, there has been plenty of demand. According to the
Government Accountability Office, there are as many as
180 mercenary firms in Iraq, with tens of thousands of
employees. Without the occupation and continued funding
for the war, these companies would not be in Iraq.

Even though this scandal is about a system, not about
one company or "a few bad apples," Blackwater does
stand out. While it has no shortage of US and British
competitors in Iraq, no other private force's actions
have had more of an impact on events in Iraq than
those of the North Carolina-based company.
Blackwater's primary purpose in Iraq, at which it
has been very effective, is to keep the most hated US
occupation officials alive by any means necessary.
This has encouraged conduct that places American
lives at an infinitely higher premium than those of
Iraqi civilians, even in cases where the only Iraqi
crime is driving too close to a VIP convoy protected
by Blackwater guards.”

Scahill is right - while Prince et. al. are mercenaries, they are our mercenaries. This is one more aspect of the fiasco the Bush administration has created in their misguided war on terror.
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P.S.: (Added the Next Day) On npr this morning I listened to Diane Rehm interview several people about this issue. At one point there was a discussion about whether it is proper to refer to Blackwater, et. al. as mercenaries. I clearly have my own views on this. The conversation seemed so much hair-splitting insofar as the "private military contractors" are performing essential tasks and that the obvious substitution effect is that the "real" military can be sent off to do other things. That said, it seems clear too that Blackwater, et. al. neglect the 'rules of engagement' or the 'rules for the use of force'(a very fine distinction made by some of the guests) when it suits them. They do so too with impunity. This last point was made by Deborah Avant, whose research on privatized military I have mentioned here before. The discussion seemed Orwellian because one of the guests, Mr. Douglas Brooks, is President of "the International Peace Operations Association" which is the professional organization that represents outfits like Blackwater.