Talking about The White Rabbit

I’ve neglected posting on one of four foci of this blog: the privatization of force. To catch up a bit, let me throw The White Rabbit, aka Blackwater Blogger, at you.

I’ve followed The White Rabbit since it appeared a couple of months ago, but I have neglected to post on it for, well, no good reason at all. (In fact, I started to write this post over the weekend, but opted to continue to reading Singer’s Children at War instead.) It’s a well written, if wordy, blog seeking to clarify sensationalist stories about contractors. Most of the time it does a descent enough job while mocking the industry’s attackers, especially Scahill. For the fact-conscious, the blog does go too far at times with oversimplified arguments and data that mirrors its attackers. To be sure, there are the profit-seeking criminal contractors like Custer Battles who bend the rules, but there are others who are operating within or near the fuzzy rule set incompletely managed by the client who bears the ultimate responsibility of the actions of its agents.

When problems arise, whether its the Christmas Eve shooting, Aegis contractors hunting Iraqis, or vigilante justice by contractors, how the principal (the US) handles the situation is more important as it sets the precedent and perceptions of limits for the contractors, the local population, and the global media.

Don’t miss Sharon Weinberger’s post this morning at Danger Room on The White Rabbit.

Briefly, on the post about Mercenaries Buying Fleet of Star Destroyers, which ridicules freakish paranoia about Blackwater becoming the new Clinton-era FEMA (remember when they were “poised” to take over the government?), what about BW’s lighter than air craft? No update? 

While Sharon likes the David Hasselhof in a speedo pic, my request to the Blackwater Blogger is to be a bit more like Swedish Meatballs w/ the pics…

It’s not surprising the blog gets a little defensive at times, like when discussing the accountability of contractors, but even the defensiveness is more “rift” with reality than blogs on the other side of the debate.

All is not perfect over there as he gets caught up in his own rhetoric often, but factual counters of the emotional dribble against contractors (or the emotional dribble for contractors for that matter) is rare in the blogosphere (save MountainRunner of course).

Update: Following Sharon’s post, introduced the Blackwater Blogger, “Patrick Henry” to Sharon and Mr. “Henry” to Sharon. The result can be seen in a) the questionnaire at the top of the Blackwater Blogger’s blog as well as some other commentary. Meanwhile, Swedish Meatballs took umbrage with the fact that they were mentioned in the same sentence as David Hasselhof.