Blackwater Settles with Families in Iraqi Killings: Keeping Moral Focus Honest in 2012 U.S. Elections

Here's another of those pictures from the Iraqi war that I cannot allow myself to forget, once having seen it.  It's a picture of Ali Kinani, who was murdered in Baghdad on 16 Sept. 2007 by the U.S. hired mercenary firm Blackwater.  As Common Dreams reports, Blackwater (which subsequently took the name Xe and now Academi) reached a settlement last week with families of those killed in the 2007 incident and another in 2004.

Erik Prince's Image a Liability for His Mercenary Company: Seeks to Sell

I wonder if the new president of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference Timothy Dolan and Bully Bill Donohue will be raising a fuss anytime soon about what Erik Prince has done to undermine the reputation of the Catholic church in the U.S. as a group standing for human rights--and human decency, and justice and love?

President Obama Hires Blackwater Again: Mary, Help of Christians, Pray for Us

So Mr. Obama has once again hired the firm of murderous thugs, Blackwater, headed by ultra-right über-Catholic Erik Prince.

Reading this article on the heels of the recent revelation that the president carries a picture of Mary, Help of Christians in his wallet makes me wonder about Mr. Obama's Catholic connections.  I hope he's carrying that holy card as a reminder that someone needs to remember and pray for the poor people, Christian or not, murdered by thugs hired by the American government.  Thugs who are, in some cases, Catholics.

I am growing very tired of discovering that my tax dollars are being used to fund these folks.

And then there's this.  And this.  And Jeff Sharlet's valuable report on how the U.S. military is being transformed into a branch of American fundamentalist Christianity.  Complete with rifles.

Blackwater Settles with U.S. Government, Contracts Keep Coming

Blackwater security company (it's now called XE) is back in the news.  This private-mercenary group has supplied military personnel for recent U.S. wars in the Middle East, and has been credibly accused of atrocities and various other improprieties circumventing the laws of various nations.

And now it's being reported that the U.S. State Department has struck a deal with Blackwater, requiring it to pay $42 million in fines for its improprieties, in lieu of facing criminal charges.  And here's the kicker in this deal:

My Game, My Rules: Glenn Beck Teaches Rules of Civility for Racial Discussion

I wrote yesterday,

You see how this game is constructed: when it’s played by the real victims of racial or gender discrimination, it’s an illicit game, a diversion from the serious business of life in these God-fearing United States. But when it’s played by the men who rule us, when they choose to play the race game, it’s not only valid, but it’s necessary. It’s their daring decision to alert us to the dangers of what we can all see right in front of our eyes, but few of us are willing to describe. . . . .

The game is designed so that only those who designed it can win at it. And it’s designed so that any challenge to its rules only reinforces the rightness of those rules.

And now I’m interested to read (here and here ) that Glenn Beck has just offered to teach us how to play the race game. In Mr. Beck’s view, you can’t go around calling Addison Graves “Big Joe” Wilson a racist. You have to have evidence of his racism.

It’s uncivil, you see, to go around calling people racists without evidence.

Even though that’s exactly what Mr. Beck has done repeatedly for some time now, when he accuses President Obama of being a racist.

What matters here, you see, is who makes and who owns the rules. The white men who make the rules intend to use them to—you’ve got it—the advantage of other white men like themselves. They can play the game with abandon, as long as they are the ones benefiting from doing so.

But call them at it, and name their racist game for what it is, and you’ll suddenly find that you are the racist. Not them. Not those who pander to gross racial fears and use gross racial stereotypes to keep themselves in power. Only those like President Carter who see the damage that the race-baiting does to all of us and want to move the country beyond such dysfunctional behavior.

Glenn Beck offering to teach us how to understand racism: that’s rich. About like Dick Cheney offering to give us a brush-up course in ethics 101. Or Erik Prince and Blackwater proposing to teach faith-based organizations how to run themselves in accord with sound religious and moral principles.

Erik Prince Implicated in Murder: Breaking News

This is news that will bear watching from a number of angles. Huffington Post has just uploaded an article by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation announcing that Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, has been implicated in murder. Prince founded Blackwater in North Carolina in 1997 to do military training and supply weapons.

Under the Bush regime, this mercenary group received one contract after another to supply hired troops to the Iraqi conflict to supplement American troops. The company made mega millions in this capacity, but has come under scrutiny after allegations arose that its employees had killed innocent civilians in Iraq. The Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has sought to inquire into these allegations and the activities of Blackwater in Iraq. The Committee concluded that this mercenary organization was "staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets."

The allegations about Erik Prince surfacing today are sworn statements by a former Blackwater employee and a former ex-Marine hired as a security guard for the company. These men allege that Prince may have murdered or collaborated in the murder of individuals cooperating with federal probes of criminal activities by Blackwater.

The testimony of the former employee states that Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies have "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." The former employee also says that Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq those sharing his vision of "Christian supremacy," "knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis."

As I say, this story bears watching from a number of angles. As I've noted previously on this blog, Prince is among a gang--I'll be blunt--of outright thugs who have found refuge in the Catholic church in the past few decades, who share a dream of pushing the Catholic church more and more to the political right. I am all for welcome, and I believe that the church ought to open its arms to everyone, saint and sinner alike.

But I am perturbed by what seems to be the penchant of the American Catholic church in recent years to open its arms far more fondly to neocon thugs than to many of its own flock, who have been driven from communion by the church's refusal to permit theological dialogue, to affirm the full personhood of women and the right of women to ordination, to love and accept gay persons, and to meet with and bind the wounds of many Catholics who were sexually abused by clergy as children and whose lives have been made a living hell as a result.

The church appears to have more room for Erik Prince and Newt Gingrich than it does for the faithful theologians it has silenced one after another, for women and gay people who want to claim their full personhood, or for those abused as youths by clergy.

I'll be following the Erik Prince story with great interest, too, because of the considerable role his family played in funding the battle to overturn same-sex marriage in California. His mother gave $450,000 to that fight. Have a look at the chart featured in the article to which I have just linked about that story, and note the intricate interconnections between this one family, with its "Christian supremacist" view of life, and one group after another, all of whom appear linked by a theocratic agenda to impose their "Christian" views on the whole society. Note the influence that a few wealthy powerful people can exert in our society, through channels often hidden from public scrutiny, as money moves around from linked group to link group to suppress democratic deliberation and progressive change grounded in such deliberation.

The chart does not even tell the entire story. Prince's father founded the anti-gay Family Research Council along with Gary Bauer. Between July 2003 and July 2006, Prince's family foundation gave at least $670, 000 to Family Research Council and $531, 000 to Focus on the Family.

For anyone concerned about the role played by religion in the public sphere, about the attempt of Christian theocrats to subvert democratic processes, about the unspeakable collaboration of some of these groups with murder and atrocities of innocent people in the Middle East, about the considerable welcome these folks receive in some sectors of American Catholicism (and the considerable silence of American Catholics of the center about that unholy development), and about the link between right-wing religion and homophobia, this is a story to follow.

In its eagerness to make gay folks unwelcome in church and society, the Catholic church may sometimes get into bed with murderers. And that's one bed it would do well to stay out of if it wants to remain credible, it seems to me.