Last edited Mon Mar 13, 2017, 01:00 PM - Edit history (2)
ETA: Try nine and a half years. It was in "Outlook," the Sunday opinion section.
TO VIKTOR GO THE SPOILS: War and Terror Inc.
TO VIKTOR GO THE SPOILS
War and Terror Inc.
By Douglas Farah Sunday, September 23, 2007
Immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the rest of the world had to decide whether it was with us or against us. But it turns out that in the new world order, you can be both -- and make a boatload of money in the process.
Take Viktor Bout, a Russian air-transport magnate and the world's premier gray- market arms provider. Every year, warlords, gangsters, militiamen and terrorists kill tens of thousands of people in wars that are only sporadically reported to the outside world. They do their butchery using weapons obtained and delivered, to all sides of these conflicts, by Bout and his ilk. These are the real weapons of mass destruction in the post-Cold War world, taking lives and shattering communities from the slums of Baghdad to the jungles of Colombia, from the streets of Beirut to the impoverished diamond-mining hamlets of West Africa.
No ideology and few moral considerations guide Bout. His new class of global entrepreneurs operates under virtually no international constraints, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves and corrupt officials in what's left of the military and intelligence services of the former Soviet bloc, whose vast, uncontrolled arsenals are the source of most of the lethal cargo. While the conduct of private contractors such as Blackwater USA -- the American security company back in the news last week after its officers were involved in a deadly Baghdad shootout -- come under some scrutiny and government control, not even such minimal accountability is required of the world's foremost weapons merchants.
These arms entrepreneurs almost always escape international sanctions because they don't work for any one state but have proved useful to many. Worse, much of what they do is not illegal, and the penalties for breaking the few laws that may apply are minuscule and entirely unenforceable. .... The Marine Corps has a saying: "If you want it bad, you get it bad." With Bout and his ilk, we are getting the worst by allowing him to prosper under the illusion that he is a necessary evil. Ask the amputees in Sierra Leone, the child soldiers in Congo and the abused women of Taliban-era Afghanistan what the true cost is.
doug@douglasfarah.com
Douglas Farah, a research fellow with the Nine/Eleven Finding Answers Foundation, is the coauthor of "Merchant of Death."
About Douglas Farah
Douglas Farah:
@farah_douglas
Douglas Farah has established himself as an expert in international criminal networks, terrorist strategy, insurgencies, and intelligence reform.
Alexandria, VA
ibiconsultants.net
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