America Inc. at war: Hiring mercenaries reeks of corruption Tribune Editorial Article Last Updated: 12/03/2007 11:12:45 PM MST
Americans should be concerned about who is fighting in Iraq in their name. They probably would be surprised to learn that mercenaries from developing nations are standing guard over the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, for example. This state of affairs reeks of corruption from several directions at once. It enables a president to go to war when he knows that he could not do so if only Americans from the regular U.S. armed forces and our allies were doing the fighting. It invites private security contractors to pick the pocket of the American taxpayer. It permits those contractors to commit atrocities in Iraq with no accountability to either U.S. or Iraqi courts of military justice. And, as a report in Sunday’s Tribune made clear, it allows unscrupulous contractors or subcontractors to exploit soldiers of fortune from poor nations without consequences. Outsourcing a war, it turns out, creates many of same opportunities for fleecing workers as the outsourcing of toy making or garment manufacturing. Who knew? But then, the United States has never outsourced a war to the extent that it has in Iraq. Nor has it ever done so in today’s atmosphere of cutthroat globalization of labor. Sunday’s story introduced The Tribune’s readers to Mario Urquia, a Honduran special forces soldier who was recruited to fight in Iraq by a representative of Your Solutions Inc., a now defunct subcontractor to the private security firm Triple Canopy. Urquia claims that he signed a contract that was supposed to pay him $15,600 to serve for a year in Iraq, which he did, but he has not been paid. When, after returning from Iraq, he blew the whistle on Honduran military officers involved in the scheme, he received death threats and had to flee his country. Despite the fact that he fought for the United States, this nation has denied him entry on a previously valid visa, and also has refused him political asylum. He now is living illegally in Ogden, destitute and without his family. You can add Urquia’s name to the list of tens of thousands of other foreign nationals, most prominently Iraqis, who signed a contract with America Inc. and got stiffed. No money. No political asylum. No hope for U.S. citizenship. This is one hell of a way to run a war.