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I think that describes the actions of someone who was in the military and went into Iraq following orders. It does not describe the actions of someone who star
by md_ 4y ago
I think that describes the actions of someone who was in the military and went into Iraq following orders.
It does not describe the actions of someone who started a private mercenary company in order to make money. Which is a generous interpretation, since Prince has also been accused of holding a religious belief in killing Muslims.
Whatever you say about Bush and Cheney’s motives—and there’s much to say—they are not Prince’s motives. His motives, and responsibility, are his own.
- xg15 4y agoNo objection to that, but someone still had to hire the mercenary company.
- md_ 4y agoAgreed! Plenty of blame to go around. When I was younger, I held a lot of anger at Bush, Cheney, and other ideologues whose belief in the righteousness of their cause allowed them to ignore the evidence (no WMDs, no terrorist links), logic (the strategic costs of invasion), or ethics (torture, civilian deaths). Now, though, I find myself a little bit more sympathetic to them: in recent years, American politics have been warped by non-believers—non-believers in democracy, in law, in any cause other than their own power and enrichment. Bush, Cheney, even Rumsfeld, seem to me to be smugly mistaken believers in the justness of their cause, but that’s still a cause other than their own personal power. Erik Prince, in my view—discounting the lurid (but potentially true!) allegations that he believed he was fighting a Christian crusade against non-believers—is a foreshadowing of the Trump era, a privileged and wealthy man wrapping himself in the flag to hide his cynical interest in nothing more than making even more money, in absolutely any way possible. Hard to say what’s worse, of course, but there’s certainly variety.