November 02, 2014
The conviction in a Washington, D.C. court
Wednesday of four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards for their roles
in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead and 17 other
wounded is a small, symbolic and perhaps significant act of justice in a much
bigger and unresolved drama of death, destruction and impunity. The
significance is that some Americans and British who invaded Iraq on false
pretense and killed many innocent Iraqis have been held accountable by a jury
of their peers in a court of law, and they may be punished with long jail
sentences.
The larger drama that begs moral resolution is that punishing a few hired
guards and gunmen while ignoring the responsibility of the political leadership
of the United States and Great Britain that waged this criminal war in Iraq in
the name of their entire nations is a gross abdication of responsibility — and
itself a moral and political crime that makes a laughing stock of those
American and British politicians who lecture us about the value and power of
democracy.
The long quest for accountability for the mayhem and mass suffering that
resulted from the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not only about redressing
the misdeeds of the past, because the death and destruction that the American
and British governments unleashed in early 2003 continue to spread mayhem all
around the region — and perhaps even across the world, judging by concerns
about militant Salafist-Takfiris returning to Western countries from waging war
with ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
The jury in this case ruled that when the Blackwater guards started shooting in
a busy intersection and killed 17 civilian Iraqis, they were not engaged in a
battle of war, but rather in a criminal act. Ronald C. Machen Jr., the United
States attorney in Washington, D.C., said after the trial that, “This verdict
is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the
rule of law, even in times of war. Seven years ago, these Blackwater
contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers
on innocent men, women and children. Today, they were held accountable for that
outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families.”
Well, sort of. The real “devastating consequences” that need to be addressed by
all Americans and British is their governments’ official decision to attack
Iraq, wipe out its government and security services, and unleash a maelstrom of
killings and conquests by various Iraqi and other groups that has left the
country not only shattered — but also has left it as fertile ground for the
birth, expansion and consolidation of ISIS and many other such Salafist-Takfiri
criminals.
The bigger question that continues to plague us all is the symbolism of how the
U.S. armed forces act with impunity anywhere in the world, to protect American
interests — while the interests of anyone else, especially darker natives of
the South, be damned. The ongoing drones attacks in several countries and the
air attacks against ISIS in Syria-Iraq are just two examples of the problem of
the use of American power that is both uncontrollable and unaccountable.
Attorneys for the defendants in the Blackwater security guards’ trial argued
that their clients acted reasonably “at a time when the Iraqi capital was the
scene of ‘horrific threats’ from car bombs, ambushes and follow-on attacks,
sometimes aided by Iraqi security forces — infiltrated by guerrillas,” one press
report noted.
Well, the truly “horrific threats” that faced all Iraqis — including the
several million who fled the country as refugees — were mostly anchored in the
consequences of the Anglo-American invasion and the American occupation that
was managed by political amateurs like Paul Bremer. Violence by Iraqis was the
sad and inevitable consequence of the chaotic conditions the clueless Americans
created before they finally left that tortured land after a decade of playing
with it like a toy they could never understand or master.
The verdict against the four Americans this week will be appealed and tested in
court, and it may not hold. If it does hold, and the men are jailed for many
years, a small dose of justice would have been achieved. It would also suggest
that those who uphold the law in small doses can also do so on the bigger
issues where criminal conduct is the work of their government, rather than
individual hired gunmen. The verdict is a small, single example of the rule of
law in action that does affirm one of the most impressive aspects of the
American system of life and governance — the application of the rule of law.
The dark side of this same matter is that such shining examples of justice in
action are rarely applied to the foreign policies of the American government,
whose consequences are so much more dangerous and devastating.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He
was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute
for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of
Beirut. On Twitter @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global