a classic Saturday Night Live sketch from the 1980s, a group of oblivious guys sit around and talk about enacting their terrible plans, from doing home renovations on a rental apartment to inviting a crack cocaine addict for a stay-over. Now it seems a new version is being filmed in Abu Dhabi—by Israeli, U.S., and UAE leaders talking up the bad idea of using private military contractors into Gaza, in contradiction of every lesson learned in Iraq, Afghanistan, and to the Washington Post’s uber-connected David Ignatius, these leaders want to hire and deploy U.S.-based armed contractors, after a ceasefire, to help the wartorn enclave find its footing in the post-war future. In his July 23 column, Ignatius generously describes the idea as “potentially controversial.”
This is an understatement, given the decades of scandals that surround the private military industry. You may recall the sex-worker abuse perpetrated by Dyncorp employees in the Balkans, in which the company’s site supervisor videotaped himself raping two young women and the whistleblower was punished. Or the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq by CACI contractors. Or Blackwater’s Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad that left 17 dead. And these are the well-known ones. There are scores of lesser-remembered incidents, like the time Aegis contractors shot at civilians, made a “trophy” video, and put it on the Internet; or the time a Blackwater contractor drunkenly shot and killed a guard of the Iraqi prime minister on Christmas Eve
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