Ex-Blackwater CEO Unimpressed By Afghan Strategy
- Thread starter AAAintheBeltway
- Start date
So how many of your children will be volunteering to go to Afghanistan? I didn't think so.
We could turn Afghanistan into Switzerland, but it would require hundreds of thousands of troops, the killing of most of their male population and probably nuclear war with Pakistan.
We spend more than our annual infrastructure budget there. As Prince noted, our military is like most things government does, grossly expensive and shockingly inefficient. I would have thought after 17 years of failure, a new approach might be warranted but the generals disagree.
Yeah but he his pitching his private contracting firm as the alternative -- an approach that has been proven to be more expensive and bloated than the military.
Nowhere in his response is any real support to just leaving Afghanistan -- Prince, as always, is just pitching his business.
What makes you think so? He sold out his stake in Blackwater and its successor company. His sister is Education Sec'y Betsy Devos.
Interesting writeup on him here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Prince
"Prince has defended Blackwater's work, pointing to the fact that in 40,000 personal security missions, only 200 involved guards firing their weapons. He has said, "No one under our care was ever killed or injured. We kept them safe, all the while we had 30 of our men killed."[23]
Prince, according to author Robert Young Pelton, reportedly thinks of Blackwater's relationship to the military as something similar to FedEx's relationship to the U.S. Post Office: "an efficient, privatized solution to sclerotic and wasteful government bureaucracy."[30] He credits his father's competitive streak in the automotive business with the inspiration to design a lighter, faster army.[31]
Prince resigned as CEO of Blackwater on March 2, 2009, and remained chairman of the board until he sold the company in late 2010 to a group of investors.[32]"
Prince is still in the mercenary business for any government willing to pay.His latest pitch is to Trump for Afghanistan.
Private security for the United Arab Emirates
After Blackwater faced mounting legal problems in the United States, Prince was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and moved to Abu Dhabi in 2010. His task was to assemble an 800-member troop of foreign troops for the U.A.E., which was planned months before the Arab Spring.[34] He helped the UAE found a new company named Reflex Responses, or R2, with 51 percent local ownership, carefully avoiding his name on corporate documents. He worked to oversee the effort and recruit troops, among others from Executive Outcomes, a former South African mercenary firm hired by several African governments during the 1990s to defeat violent rebellions in addition to protecting oil and diamond reserves.
In January 2011, the Associated Press reported that Prince was training a force of 2,000 Somalis for anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. The program was reportedly funded by several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and backed by the United States. Prince's spokesman, Mark Corallo, said Prince has "no financial role" in the project and declined to answer any questions about Prince's involvement.
The Associated Press quotes John Burnett of Maritime Underwater Security Consultants as saying, "There are 34 nations with naval assets trying to stop piracy and it can only be stopped on land. With Prince's background and rather illustrious reputation, I think it's quite possible that it might work."[35]
Last edited:
McCain had nothing to do with it. You need to watch the speech and stop listening to this Ann Coulter. She has less accomplishments than Hillary Clinton. I don't listen to what either of them have to say, because they don't add any value to the debate.
PEACE THROUGH BORDER CONTROL
August 23, 2017
by Ann Coulter
...
Trump got thunderous applause from his 30,000-person focus group for the wall, stepped-up deportations and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- recently convicted of contempt for "racially profiling" Hispanics. But you could hear a pin drop when he mentioned Afghanistan, Nikki Haley and Gen. John Kelly. (At least he had the good sense not to bring up Goldman Sachs' Gary Cohn again.)
There were long faces all over cable news after Trump's speech, which surely triggers the reward center in his brain, like giving a mouse cheese.
What was so refreshingly different about the Trump campaign was that the candidate didn't use any of the idiotic, consultant-written bromides offered by every other GOP presidential candidate for at least the past 30 years. Instead, he looked around the country, saw what the problems were and said he'd fix them. ...
When Reagan said, "peace through strength," it meant something. But 30 years after Reagan won the Cold War, anyone who uses this expression conveys only that he has no understanding of the current war.
During the Cold War, America was facing an aggressively imperialistic, nuclear-armed Soviet Union. By contrast, the main threat to Americans' safety today comes not from a country, but from millions of individual savages spread throughout the globe.
Americans aren't being slaughtered by invading Soviet troops, "Red Dawn"-style, but by Islamic terrorists on tourist visas flying commercial airplanes into our skyscrapers, and by first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants setting off bombs and shooting people at the Boston Marathon, American military bases, community centers and gay nightclubs.
Americans are raped, addicted and murdered not by the Red Army, but by millions of illegal aliens waltzing across our wide-open border.
Our freedoms are being taken away not by a foreign power, but by our own government -- in order to protect us from terrorists, international crime rings and Mexican drug cartels operating in our own country.
Defeating a non-country adversary may seem an impossible task, but the savages are perfectly containable. Today's enemy has no capacity to harm a hair on a single American's head -- as long as we don't let them come here.
We don't need a military victory. We need an immigration moratorium.
The Non-Trump Republicans promised us only more immigration and more wars. PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!
How does a military buildup help Kate Steinle? How about the 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11? Did Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan protect soldiers at Fort Hood or nightclubbers in Orlando? Did it do anything for Grant Ronnebeck, who was fatally shot by an illegal alien robbing a convenience store in Mesa, Arizona, in 2015?
More than 1,600 American troops died in Afghanistan under Obama, and not one American is safer.
All we need to do to win the current war is: Keep our nuclear weapons in working order and stop allowing enemy forces into our country. If we must have troops constantly deployed somewhere, the only place they'd actually be useful is 10 feet into Mexico. (Let a court try to stop that!)
During the campaign, Little Marco dismissed as unrealistic Trump's proposed temporary suspension of Muslim immigration to our country -- including the more than 2 million Muslims we've taken in just since 9/11. Instead, Rubio proposed we do something achievable, like remake the entire Middle East with wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan.
Trump, and only Trump, promised to put our country first and protect our interests when it came to immigration and foreign wars. He didn't care that political correctness dictated putting America's interests dead last.
But since becoming president, instead of draining the swamp, the swamp seems to have drained Trump. His agenda has been drowned out by the agenda of Washington's Uni-Party.
That's why all we ever hear about is tax cuts and war (unless Trump is speaking to one of his 30,000-person focus groups).
Rather than actually being like Reagan and winning the war we're in, Trump has decided to continue Obama's unconstitutional "executive amnesty" -- opposition to which gave the GOP stunning victories in 2014 and 2016. This week, he grabbed the hot poker of Afghanistan, allowing ecstatic Democrats to scratch that disaster off Obama's Greatest Hits list. Now, it's Trump's war.
I don't know why Trump would surround himself with people who oppose his agenda, but on Tuesday night he heard again from the people who see him as our country's last hope. He should listen to them.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-08-23.html#read_more
August 23, 2017
by Ann Coulter
...
Trump got thunderous applause from his 30,000-person focus group for the wall, stepped-up deportations and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- recently convicted of contempt for "racially profiling" Hispanics. But you could hear a pin drop when he mentioned Afghanistan, Nikki Haley and Gen. John Kelly. (At least he had the good sense not to bring up Goldman Sachs' Gary Cohn again.)
There were long faces all over cable news after Trump's speech, which surely triggers the reward center in his brain, like giving a mouse cheese.
What was so refreshingly different about the Trump campaign was that the candidate didn't use any of the idiotic, consultant-written bromides offered by every other GOP presidential candidate for at least the past 30 years. Instead, he looked around the country, saw what the problems were and said he'd fix them. ...
When Reagan said, "peace through strength," it meant something. But 30 years after Reagan won the Cold War, anyone who uses this expression conveys only that he has no understanding of the current war.
During the Cold War, America was facing an aggressively imperialistic, nuclear-armed Soviet Union. By contrast, the main threat to Americans' safety today comes not from a country, but from millions of individual savages spread throughout the globe.
Americans aren't being slaughtered by invading Soviet troops, "Red Dawn"-style, but by Islamic terrorists on tourist visas flying commercial airplanes into our skyscrapers, and by first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants setting off bombs and shooting people at the Boston Marathon, American military bases, community centers and gay nightclubs.
Americans are raped, addicted and murdered not by the Red Army, but by millions of illegal aliens waltzing across our wide-open border.
Our freedoms are being taken away not by a foreign power, but by our own government -- in order to protect us from terrorists, international crime rings and Mexican drug cartels operating in our own country.
Defeating a non-country adversary may seem an impossible task, but the savages are perfectly containable. Today's enemy has no capacity to harm a hair on a single American's head -- as long as we don't let them come here.
We don't need a military victory. We need an immigration moratorium.
The Non-Trump Republicans promised us only more immigration and more wars. PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!
How does a military buildup help Kate Steinle? How about the 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11? Did Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan protect soldiers at Fort Hood or nightclubbers in Orlando? Did it do anything for Grant Ronnebeck, who was fatally shot by an illegal alien robbing a convenience store in Mesa, Arizona, in 2015?
More than 1,600 American troops died in Afghanistan under Obama, and not one American is safer.
All we need to do to win the current war is: Keep our nuclear weapons in working order and stop allowing enemy forces into our country. If we must have troops constantly deployed somewhere, the only place they'd actually be useful is 10 feet into Mexico. (Let a court try to stop that!)
During the campaign, Little Marco dismissed as unrealistic Trump's proposed temporary suspension of Muslim immigration to our country -- including the more than 2 million Muslims we've taken in just since 9/11. Instead, Rubio proposed we do something achievable, like remake the entire Middle East with wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan.
Trump, and only Trump, promised to put our country first and protect our interests when it came to immigration and foreign wars. He didn't care that political correctness dictated putting America's interests dead last.
But since becoming president, instead of draining the swamp, the swamp seems to have drained Trump. His agenda has been drowned out by the agenda of Washington's Uni-Party.
That's why all we ever hear about is tax cuts and war (unless Trump is speaking to one of his 30,000-person focus groups).
Rather than actually being like Reagan and winning the war we're in, Trump has decided to continue Obama's unconstitutional "executive amnesty" -- opposition to which gave the GOP stunning victories in 2014 and 2016. This week, he grabbed the hot poker of Afghanistan, allowing ecstatic Democrats to scratch that disaster off Obama's Greatest Hits list. Now, it's Trump's war.
I don't know why Trump would surround himself with people who oppose his agenda, but on Tuesday night he heard again from the people who see him as our country's last hope. He should listen to them.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-08-23.html#read_more
"Blackwater/Academi/XI founder Erik Prince is urging US to adopt the British East India Company model in Afghanistan: install a "Viceroy" backed by a mercenary army-which he just happens to have ready..."
I Was a Mercenary. Trust Me: Erik Prince’s Plan Is Garbage
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...-trust-me-erik-princes-plan-is-garbage-215563
For the past year, Erik Prince has been peddling an idea that should alarm anyone who has followed his career: We should replace U.S. troops in Afghanistan with mercenaries, preferably his.
For those who do not know Prince, he was a founder of Blackwater International, the private military contractor that became so toxic, he had to change the company’s name. Under his management, Blackwater committed perhaps the worst war crime of the Iraq War: A squad of armed contractors killed 17 civilians at the Nisour traffic circle in Baghdad. The incident sparked a political uproar in Iraq, vastly complicated the mission of the State Department diplomats the contractors were ostensibly there to protect, and set off multiple probes into Blackwater’s conduct. A FBI inquiry later found that 14 of the 17 deaths were unjustified. For Americans, the “Nisour Incident” was a stain on their country’s moral character. For Iraqis, Blackwater’s reckless behavior and callous disregard for Iraqi lives seemed emblematic of America’s handling of the war as a whole, and helped to hasten our exit.
Now, Prince wants to privatize the Afghanistan War. And Afghans thought the worst we could do was bomb them.
The generals laughed at Prince, and thankfully the president went with the nonmercenary option. But Prince refuses to disappear, excoriating the generals in a recent op-ed for The New York Times, and pushing again for mercenaries, suggesting “it is not too late to alter the course.”
As a former military contractor, I cannot imagine a worse outcome for Afghanistan or the U.S. than handing everything over to mercenaries.
(Much more at above url)
I Was a Mercenary. Trust Me: Erik Prince’s Plan Is Garbage
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...-trust-me-erik-princes-plan-is-garbage-215563
For the past year, Erik Prince has been peddling an idea that should alarm anyone who has followed his career: We should replace U.S. troops in Afghanistan with mercenaries, preferably his.
For those who do not know Prince, he was a founder of Blackwater International, the private military contractor that became so toxic, he had to change the company’s name. Under his management, Blackwater committed perhaps the worst war crime of the Iraq War: A squad of armed contractors killed 17 civilians at the Nisour traffic circle in Baghdad. The incident sparked a political uproar in Iraq, vastly complicated the mission of the State Department diplomats the contractors were ostensibly there to protect, and set off multiple probes into Blackwater’s conduct. A FBI inquiry later found that 14 of the 17 deaths were unjustified. For Americans, the “Nisour Incident” was a stain on their country’s moral character. For Iraqis, Blackwater’s reckless behavior and callous disregard for Iraqi lives seemed emblematic of America’s handling of the war as a whole, and helped to hasten our exit.
Now, Prince wants to privatize the Afghanistan War. And Afghans thought the worst we could do was bomb them.
The generals laughed at Prince, and thankfully the president went with the nonmercenary option. But Prince refuses to disappear, excoriating the generals in a recent op-ed for The New York Times, and pushing again for mercenaries, suggesting “it is not too late to alter the course.”
As a former military contractor, I cannot imagine a worse outcome for Afghanistan or the U.S. than handing everything over to mercenaries.
(Much more at above url)