MIGRAINES & MILITARY MATTERS, PART 2

The impenetrable mystery at the center of all life -- that vast, incomprehensibly cheesy wad of existential jello that controls all things, even -- has seen fit to ever so slightly relax the physiological c-clamp of pain that’s been squeezing the piss out of my fat and ugly head lately. Given a day-pass to the land of the living, I pant in exhausted relief and try to remember where I was when last I visited this appallingly seedy waste of time and energy.

Ah yes -- the evil disease of “private military contractors.” Actually, in a forlorn effort to inject at least a smidgen of comic relief into so revolting a topic, I decided to throw away valuable seconds by visiting the website of arguably the most notoriously vile of these parasitical corporate vermin, Blackwater USA. It isn’t meant to be intentionally hilarious, I suppose, nor is it particularly surprising just how the ambulatory chunks of human waste at Blackwater describe their “vision”:

To support security, peace, freedom, and democracy everywhere.

Some things are so opaquely ridiculous, so patently insane, such premier examples of cognitive bastardization, that caustic remarks and pithy commentaries are superfluous at best. The gobbledygook above is a perfect illustration. I guess it’s theoretically possible that there might be a sub-genius (or two) somewhere in the dim bowels of Blackwater who actually believes that this criminally sick gang of corporate thugs has anything to do with “peace, freedom, and democracy” -- presumably in such purported bastions of “democracy” and “freedom” as Iraq or Afghanistan. Or New Orleans. However, the conscious cynicism necessary to the dissemination of these sorts of laughable fictions makes me wonder. I mean, as disgusting and despicable as the alleged “people” at Blackwater are, it’s an unreasonable stretch to imagine that they’re so stupid as to take their own public-relations flackery seriously. But, of course, their bald-faced bullshit is for our consumption, not theirs. Duh.

Whatever. Anyway, it actually gets worse, if that were possible. Blackwater describes its “mission”:

To support national and international security policies that protect those who are defenseless and provide a free voice for all with a dedication to providing ethical, efficient, and effective turnkey solutions that positively impact the lives of those still caught in desperate times.

Blackwater is committed to the foot soldiers -- the men and women who stand on the frontlines of the global war on terror and who believe in a peaceful future for their communities and nations. Whether serving in or out of uniform, Blackwater is committed to providing these men and women with the best in training and tactical support to ensure they are fully prepared to meet current and future global security challenges.

And if you believe such unadulterated hogsnot, more power to you; grotesque images of barbecued Blackwater employees in Iraq instantly, if involuntarily, spring to mind.

Where do “firms” like Blackwater come from? I’m not trying to be cute here, tossing out disingenuous questions that have a multitude of potential, and uninformative, answers -- I’d really like to know what evil genius first “midwifed” this cross-eyed bastard offspring of corporate money and military power. Now, I realize that the corporate world has always been the main beneficiary of the more-or-less war economy we’ve suffered under since at least the late 1940’s, as both the prime concocter of largely mythical “threats” and the recipient of nearly incalculable governmental largess in an effort to “meet” these “threats”; deriving profit from war, or, at most, the idea of war, is an age-old American tradition, grown to new heights of extent and sophistication over the past 50 or 60 years. The difference these days is the corporate incursion into the military’s traditional “front-end,” in a manner of speaking, the overt assumption of military functions and responsibilities by profit-motivated private companies. No longer content with merely amassing enormous wealth by purveying the implements and machinery of death and destruction, now there’s this insane hankering to actually wield the weaponry themselves. For profit.

The privatization of conflict, this fateful injection of financial incentives into the actual waging of war -- not simply within the economic apparatus that makes war possible -- is probably the number one thing about this shoddy Neo-Con era that really curdles my gizzard, which is certainly saying a dripping gobfull. Consequently, the regime will hardly be dissuaded from their quest to establish war as a permanent condition (a Democratically-controlled Congress? Oh, please), so long as it’s profitable to do so. Destroying the profit motive would be a decent first step; dismantling Blackwater and other like-minded vulturine corporations would be even better. Removing Bush and Cheney from the offices in which they’ve been squatting for more than six fucking years would, naturlich, be the best course of all.

Oh, if only I could trip back to my Cold War Germany Air Force days, where we used to laugh so rudely at the commercials on Armed Forces Television which informed us that we -- the grunts, chumps, and hoseheads stationed in Europe -- were at “the tip of the sword,” the brave defenders of western civilization. The claptrap then seemed, well, more simple somehow ...