Fallujah rundown part the second

I'm making this a separate post from the previous one because it doesn't deal with our response to the atrocities in Fallujah but rather the reaction of some on the Left.

We start with John Hawkins showcasing some of the comments to this post on Democratic Underground. Here are the first two:

DulceDecorum: "Death to ALL mercenaries. The beer is on me."

5thGenDemocrat: "Regular Army here. I wore a uniform and followed Geneva conventions. These swine were MERCENARIES. Paid Hessians. Murderers for hire. John They're worse than Al-Queda. At least Al-Queda is fighting for a cause. I say "too bad, so sad, bye-bye."

I want to comment on the use of the term "mercenaries" here. Dictionary.com defines the noun form of mercenary as:

1) One who serves or works merely for monetary gain; a hireling.
2) A professional soldier hired for service in a foreign army.

I wondered why they were being so characterized so I followed the link to DU and found a link to and excerpt from this article. I knew that they were guarding a food shipment and it turns out that they were working for a private security firm named Blackwater Security Consulting. Hmmm... sounds like a reasonable company for the US Government to contract this job to.

Let's compare this to the definitions above. Of course these guys were working for pay, most people do. I know I do. The connotation here is of a person who has placed the acquisition of this pay above all other considerations both moral and ethical. Given the history of these guys, I find it extremely unlikely that this is the case.

The second definition also doesn't apply. First of all, they were not hired for service in a foreign army. They were Americans and they were not serving in anybody's army. They were not combatants, they were security guards, albeit highly skilled and trained, and likely paid commensurate with their experience and abilities.

In short, I think characterizing these men as mercenaries is incorrect and I think the authors of these comments are doing so in order to justify their celebration of these atrocities. Go read this and then tell me if you think these men deserved what they got.

But the one that really got me is the one that has raised a firestorm among conservative bloggers all over the web. Left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who authors Daily Kos, had this to say:

Every death should be on the front page

Let the people see what war is like. This isn't an Xbox game. There are real repercussions to Bush's folly.

That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

by kos on Thu Apr 1st, 2004 at 15:08:56 GMT

No link because he has since pulled this post. It did exist, though, as I read it while it was still up. It's been archived in several places. Michael Friedman has archived a screen shot in this post where he talks about informing some of Kos's advertisers about the post. Some of them have already pulled their ads.

Connie du Toit has this to say:

Here's my take on the whole KOS controversy (OK, it's a line stolen from Kim):

Scratch a liberal/socialist and you'll find a totalitarian fascist within.

What I don't get is why everyone is so surprised.

Kos has replaced the post with this one. He's clearly put more thought into his initial reaction and attempts to clarify why he posted what he did. Nevertheless, you can tell a lot about a person by what he or she says before taking the time to think things through. Keep in mind also that Kos is one of the more prominent bloggers on the Left. A lot of people pay attention to what he writes.

It's an explanation but not an apology. His reasons include being upset that these men got all the attention when, the same day, five soldiers were also killed, and 51 total have died in the month of March. This is a valid point but there is a critical difference that sets the death of these four men apart. Their bodies were deliberately burned and mutilated in an act of desecration that was intended to so horrify the Americans and their leaders that we would hopefully, finally, respond the way we did after the Battle of Mogadishu.

Kos also characterizes these four men as mercenaries. He writes:

Back to Iraq, our men and women in uniform are there under orders, trying to make the best of an impossible situation. The war is not their fault, and I will always defend their honor and bravery to the end of my days. But the mercenary is a whole different deal. They willingly enter a war zone, and do so because of the paycheck. They're not there for humanitarian reasons (I doubt they'd donate half their paycheck to the Red Cross or whatever). They're there because the money is DAMN good. They answer to no one except their CEO. They are dangerous, hence international efforts (however fruitless they may be) to ban their use.

Like the posters at DU, he ascribes to these men an amoral pursuit of maximum profit. He assumes that they had no good intentions and implies that people who make good money but don't donate half to charity are evil people. He implies that these men deserved what happened because they chose to go into a dangerous area whereas soldiers are required to follow orders to do the same. Yes, the money is, as he says, damn good. You know why? Because these men were damn good at their jobs. Yes, they chose to go into a dangerous area. But our soldiers chose to join the military knowing that they could be ordered to fight and may end up making the ultimate sacrifice. These guys, if anything, knew more about what they were getting into. And, although they were highly skilled, they were not invincible as their deaths so emphatically have proven. Yes, they made good money, but they also chose to take the risk knowing full well that you can't spend your money if you're dead. Misha goes straight for the jugular and makes the point in his own inimitable style:

Oh, and throw in a heap of the usual socialist howling bullshit about how he "really supports the troops" (when they shoot their officers, right Zunicunt?) for good measure. He just really really HATES those "evil mercenaries" who have the nerve to get paid for working in a war zone and they REALLY deserve to be burned, mutilated and hung from bridges as a result.

Kos closes with this:

Nobody deserves to die. But in the greater scheme of things, there are a lot of greater tragedies going on in Iraq (51 last month, plus countless civilians and Iraqi police). That those tragedies are essentially ignored these days is, ultimately, the greatest tragedy of all.

He's right that we must not ignore all those who have given their lives in Iraq. Every soldier that dies leaves behind a family that will miss him or her. But we also must not forget the hundreds of thousands who were murdered by Saddam's regime and all those who now no longer have to fear that fate. Whether or not you think it's worth the cost in American lives, do not forget the price that the Iraqi people were paying every day until we came and made it stop.