The War Machine - I Just Asked Erik Prince To Stop Bribing Politicians (David Swanson) [View all]

[Octafish]

The War Machine

I Just Asked Erik Prince To Stop Bribing Politicians

by DAVID SWANSON
CounterPunch, APRIL 16, 2015

“It’s bad enough to be creating more profit incentive for war,” I told former head of Blackwater Erik Prince, “but you recycle part of the profits as bribes for more war in the form of so-called campaign contributions. You yourself have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties and candidates. The three of you,” I said, referring to Prince, another guest, and the host of a television show that had just finished filming and was taking questions from the audience, “you seem to agree that we need either mercenaries or a draft, ignoring the option of not having these wars, which kill so many people, make us less safe, drain the economy, destroy the natural environment, and erode our civil liberties, with no upside. But this systemic pressure has been created for more war. Will you, Erik Prince, commit to not spending war profits on elections?”

Prince had hardly been asked a serious question during the past hour of filming, but that of course did not mean he would answer one. The point was to raise the topic and put it in the minds of the people sitting and applauding him. Prince tried to answer by talking about how much the F-35 fighter jet costs, continuing the hour-long pretense that if you oppose mercenaries you favor the rest of the military. I cut him off and told him to answer the question. So he said that he was no longer working with the U.S. government but with other governments around the world. Does that mean he’ll stop bribing the U.S. government? Does that mean he doesn’t bribe other governments? He didn’t say.

SNIP...

Repeatedly Prince claimed to be fighting evil people “who want to destroy the Western world, you know, our way of life.” He claimed that mercenaries could be hired to destroy ISIS, no problem! He also claimed that what’s going on in the Middle East is an age-old Sunni-Shia conflict that the United States can only tweak around the edges (through such steps, I suppose, as destroying ISIS). That each war creates more problems to be addressed with more wars, that ISIS would never have existed without the 2003 invasion, didn’t come up (except through my comments during the Q&A).

One questioner suggested that “if war were the path to peace we’d sure have peace by now,” and Prince claimed to be for peace. So Hagedorn asked him, a-t l-e-n-g-t-h, to fund the peace movement (even though she has no opinions as a Journalist), and he declined, suggesting that the mercenary industry association should do it. That’s an association, by the way, that changed its name from the International Peace Operations Association to the International Stability Operations Association in response to criticism of being “too Orwellian” — as if war brings stability any more than it brings peace.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/16/i-just-asked-erik-prince-to-stop-bribing-politicians/

David Swanson, a DUer, is one heck of a fighter -- for peace.

More on Defense Contractors lobbying cough bribing our elected representatives: OpenSecrets.org

Here's an important note: Blackwater Lobbyist Will Manage the House Intelligence Committee