by Project Itoh
It wasn’t my first time in the Pentagon, but nonetheless I couldn’t help but feel like something of a rube.
Watching the crowd disembarking at Pentagon Station it was nigh impossible to distinguish the staffers from the visitors. Due to developments in biometric IDs, clothes had become somewhat less important as a distinguishing feature than they had been years ago.
My ID, for example, was nowhere to be found in my clothes or shoes, of course—InfoSec’s secure servers had done away with the need for all that.
The upshot of all this was that the people here, whether staffers or visitors, had a tendency to rough it somewhat. Take the visitors, civilians mostly. The fashion of the day was “Pentagon style,” which was somewhere between an homage to and a parody of the typical desk-jockey uniforms of way back when—the era when the two worlds stared into each other’s faces in a game of nuclear brinksmanship. So the civilians wore bland, nondescript (or so they seemed at first glance) outfits, and the military staffers either wore similar Pentagon-style clothes or something even more casual. Basically, the likes of me had no chance of telling who was who.
We pushed through the crowds of uniforms, suits, and Birdlegs and walked toward our destination. The Birdlegs, or Birdlegged Porters, always creeped me out, as they looked just like people with no upper bodies.
Walking robot legs made out of synthetic flesh—they’d been part of the furniture these past few years. The Pentagon was a much larger physical space than people gave it credit for—roughly three times the floor space of the Empire State Building, for example, although no one trumpets this fact. Having said that, it was easier to get around by the fact of its pentagonal shape—it was never too far from one point to another. What did slow things down was the constant security checks—we needed to have our palms and fingerprints read, our retinas scanned, and our ears and noses and eyes matched against their database before we reached our appointed conference room.
We arrived at the part of the building where the conference rooms were concentrated. Virtually all of them seemed to be in use, with a variety of signs hanging from each door, indicating the nature of the conference within.
THE COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF LIBYA
EAST EUROPEAN STABILIZATION COMMISSION
PREPARATORY COMMISSION FOR HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION IN THE SUDANESE QUESTION
THE CONVENTION FOR DISSEMINATION OF BEST
PRACTICE IN COUNTERTERRORISM
All the world’s problems could be found in this little corner of the Pentagon, and presumably some of the solutions too.
Words like liberation were used without compunction; I can’t imagine that the governments of the countries concerned would have been too happy to be discussed in such explicit terms. But unlike the rest of Washington, this wasn’t the place for diplomatic niceties. Indeed, the whole raison d’être of this place was to freely discuss how America was best going to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries.
One of the conference rooms was different, though. The plaque on the door simply read NO ENTRY.
“Here we are,” said Williams, who then spun around to survey the other conference rooms. “Something a bit surreal about a room with a big ‘No Entry’ sign mixed in with all these others, huh?”
“I guess that’s the White Man’s Burden for you yet again,” I said. “If the hegemon wants to rule the world, we just have to man up and shoulder our responsibilities alone, behind closed doors and away from the rest of the world.”
Williams nodded in agreement. “There’s something so Kafkaesque about this whole thing, isn’t there?”
“When have you read any Kafka?” I asked.
Williams shrugged. “Never. I just wanted to see what it’d be like to use the word ‘Kafkaesque’ in a sentence.”
Williams knocked on the door and a man’s voice answered from within: “Identify yourselves using the device attached to the door.”
I pressed my thumb onto the pale green glass pane about the size of a domino; the lock was released and the door opened an inch.
Inside the darkened room a group of men and women were watching a porn flick.
At least, that was what it looked like when we first entered the room. The projector was showing a black man tied up in restraints, and the audience was distinctly middle-aged. They all turned to glance at us as we entered. Amid the dim sea of faces peering at us I spotted our immediate superior officer and boss, Colonel Rockwell, the leader of Special Operations I Detachment.
“My men from Unit G,” said Boss, beckoning to us to fill the empty seats. The men and women sitting at the table were all around Boss’s age or older, so it looked like we were the babies of the group. A man rose from the table to introduce himself.
Undersecretary of defense for Intelligence, he told us. USD (I). In other words, the Defense Intelligence Agency reported to him—we had some civilian bigwigs in our midst, all right. Presumably he was here to speak for the DIA.
Sure enough, intelligence agencies from the CIA to the NSA were also represented to deputy director level, as were numerous members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, including the senate majority leader. To see such a distinguished group of people huddled together in a room to watch a video of a black man being trussed up in what seemed like bondage gear was somewhat disconcerting, to say the least.
“This is a recording taken a week ago,” the USD began explaining. “The fruits of the fourth UNOSOM IV deployment. We identified this man some time ago as being the chief culprit behind the Black Sea Massacre of last October.”
“We arrested him, sir?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself. To capture, rather than simply assassinate, the number one target was contrary to all protocol and operating procedure that had been established by the intelligence community these past years.
“Just so. There were special circumstances,” explained Boss.
The USD continued. “Ms. Erica Sales here captured the man in the recording.”
The woman sitting next to the undersecretary of defense nodded curtly.
Williams leaned forward. “Excuse me, ma’am. The undersecretary referred to you as ‘Ms.’ Does that mean you’re not Forces?”
“If by ‘forces’ you mean those institutions that, at certain rare points in history, have been granted an official monopoly on organized violence by the state, then no, I’m not ‘forces,’ ” replied the woman. She stood to take center stage, and the USD took a seat. As per the civilian fashion of the day, the woman was dressed in Pentagon style. “I’m the director of the third planning department at Eugene and Krupps.”
I sighed inwardly with relief—I had chosen my words well—or at least luckily—when, earlier, I had asked, We arrested him? as opposed to what I really meant: Why didn’t we assassinate him? That would have been too blatant for a civilian—after all, the US did not condone the assassination of foreign leaders, or so the official line still went.
“The latest UNOSOM IV deployment was essentially an outsourced project from its conception,” the USD added in support of Erica Sales. “The forces deployed on the ground at the moment consist almost entirely of civilian contractors. Not just the usual suspects providing security arrangements for the Red Cross and NGOs—the actual execution of the business objectives of suppressing the armed insurgency in the area has also been assigned to independent civilian contractors.”
The execution of the business objectives.
Such an interesting way of putting it. So telling. I was sure there were plenty of people who would be repulsed by such a phrase: peace activists, bleeding-heart liberals, and the like. But the phrase gave me a glimpse into a future I had never previously imagined, and it gave me an illicit thrill. As ever, words could have that effect on me.
I listened to the official DIA line: The business of war was no different, from a certain perspective at least, from that of a pizzeria making pizzas or of a pest control company killing bugs. P
eople didn’t have to fight for ethnic identity or to be a martyr for their religion—fighting could be just an occupation like any other. I thought about this. It was precisely because war was a business that it became logistically possible to budget for it, to plan, to project manage, to place orders with manufacturers and contractors. Was modern warfare really nothing more than a purchase order to underwrite a country’s desire to throw its weight around?
Of course, the idea that war was nothing more than a business laughed in the face of the blood-steeped casualties of war, just as it laughed at me and my job. The execution of war. The idea that war was just so much business to be taken care of. That it could be forecast, controlled, and managed like any other industry.
This line of thought had been developed in Cold War–era think tanks. It was determined that the only way to truly face the horrors of a full-blown nuclear war was to take a step back and consider all the factors as cold, objective facts. The futurist Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute think tank, advocated what he called “scenario planning” for a possible “hot” nuclear war and in doing so coined the phrase “to think the unthinkable.” Wittgenstein would have approved.
Megadeath.
In order to deal with the apocalyptic reality of modern warfare, for people to be able to cope with dealing with scenes from the Book of Revelation on a daily basis, a certain finesse had become necessary when it came to terminology. Bland, bureaucratic phrases had become the norm, so that people didn’t have to be constantly reminded of the families who had lost their children or bullet-riddled corpses.
“There are a multitude of tasks required in a massive operation like this: preparing and transporting provisions, canteen setup for local distribution, laundry services, constructing new government buildings, building and staffing rehabilitation camps for the former militia, and constructing and staffing prisons for war criminals. In the past we’ve always had to move in on the ground, establish a GHQ, and call in the military engineers. Now everything can be outsourced in advance to private military companies and UN-approved NGOs, and with UNOSOM IV they’ve gone one step further. No longer is it simply about delegating the logistics to civilian contractors, it’s about having them on board at the strategic and tactical planning stages,” explained the undersecretary of defense, who then turned to Erica Sales.
The woman from Eugene & Krupps, evidently some sort of private military company, picked up where he had left off without missing a beat. “There are only three people on the US government payroll in the entire UNOSOM IV operation. Their role is essentially that of resident auditors, there to monitor our performance and judgment. Eugene and Krupps has received similar instructions from the US, British, French, German, Turkish, and Japanese governments, and we’re currently collaborating with a variety of organizations on the ground, from NGOs to the Red Cross to volunteer organizations to colleagues in the same line of work as us—such as Halliburton, who are responsible for supply train maintenance in this case—in order to lay the foundations for a lasting peace in Somalia.”
At this point Erica Sales turned to us directly to give what seemed like a business pitch. “Our company employs a large number of former Special Forces personnel, and they played an integral role in our special projects last year.”
“In other words they’re Snake Eaters, just like us,” Boss explained, his face expressionless. PMCs cherry-picking his top people by luring them away with “offers they couldn’t refuse” was a perennial headache for Colonel Rockwell, but this wasn’t the time or place for him to publicly tug on that particular thorn in his side. I glanced at Erica Sales’s face to try and see if she had picked up on Boss’s irony-laden use of the term “Snake Eater,” but she was giving nothing away.
“Eugene and Krupps had the privilege of using the results of our R and D department’s research to present a plan to the US government last September. A plan to capture alive Public Enemy Number One for the region, a certain Ahmed Hassan Salaad. Using numerous cross-corroborated sources from within the insurgency, we were able to convince the Senate Budget Committee that our plan was viable and stood a good chance of success.”
I was hearing the businesslike spiel from this woman in front of me, and indeed she was painting a picture of an efficient bureaucratic procedure. But I had seen the other side—the reality that lay behind the anodyne, whitewashed words.
The walls painted red with the blood spurting out of the former brigadier general’s throat.
The burning bodies of the bullet-riddled men and women.
The corpse of the little girl who had her pink brains spilling out from the back of her head.
The images piled vividly on top of each other. Erica Sales talked of being able to “present a plan” and had managed to weave all these words and phrases into her speech that seemed singularly inappropriate when describing war. Her words carefully chosen for their blandness had the effect of erasing all the colors of the battlefield, and it was as if in the version of war that she was weaving, nobody ever died and nobody ever killed, as if war was just like any other ordinary civilian enterprise. A whole layer of meaning was being stripped away …
… the layer that allowed you to describe in words the surprise, the astonishment, the sheer freshness of what it was like to be in the middle of battle where anyone and everyone could kill and be killed.
“After that, the Senate Budget Committee presented the précis to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, and once they’d greenlighted it, SOCOM was consulted,” continued the USD.
Colonel Rockwell nodded. “Yes, and our answer—much as it pains me to say it—was that the plan was well conceptualized and completely viable.”
“As such, we had an Extraordinary Grant approved by the budget committee and then assembled a unit to put the plan into effect. Our company suffered no casualties in the execution of the plan, and there were no unanticipated factors that interfered with the smooth running of the operation. Everything proceeded to plan, you could say,” Erica Sales continued.
I looked at the man in the picture again. The top left corner of the screen showed the date and time, currently paused, and the coordinates where the recording was taken. The jerry-rigged interrogation room was a bleak white box, and we had our Ahmed sitting on a chair in the center. By the looks of it, this was right after he had been captured.
The man was trembling.
“Is this man really a key figure in the armed insurgency?” Williams asked bluntly, pointing a finger at the man. “Wouldn’t one of these two-bit dictators be more likely to denounce us for illegally detaining him and for our Western imperialist ways, rather than just sit there trussed up like a trembling chicken?”
“Well, Ahmed Salaad is Oxford educated. He’s familiar enough with the developed world to know that we’re not about to torture a prisoner of war to death.”
“So why does our boy Ahmed look like he’s about to shit his pants, assuming he hasn’t already?”
“Just sit tight and all will be revealed, sonny.” The undersecretary of defense gave the signal, and I could tell that the footage was rolling again only by the fact that the timer in the top left corner had started counting. When all you were looking at was a single, motionless prisoner in restraints, it was hard to tell the difference. Then an off-screen interrogator started speaking to him in English.
Interrogator: We are an organization acting as a legal proxy of the United States of America, and you are being held as our captive. One of the explicit conditions of our contract with the United States government is that we voluntarily adhere to all the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We will be handing you over to the US government in due course, and provided you do not act in a violent manner yourself, no illegal force will be used on your person.
Ahmed: Aren’t you using illegal force now?
Interrogator: Our client, the government of the United States of America, has gone through all the correct channels to ensure the international legitima
cy of our actions in apprehending you. United Nations Resolution number 560097 gives us full authority to take whatever steps necessary to bring about the cessation of hostilities in Somalia.
Ahmed: So this is a legitimate military operation. I wonder who gets to decide what exactly it is that makes an act of aggression legitimate.
Interrogator: Perhaps it is the fact that an overwhelming majority of the international community sanctions our actions?
Ahmed: You know, our actions were also sanctioned by our community. We were supported by the vast majority of our people. Everyone wanted it to happen.
“Seems he’s not shy after all, shaking or no shaking,” said Williams, who almost seemed relieved. “Looks like this is just another run-of-the-mill mass murderer, then. A fanatical worshipper of what’s ‘right.’ ”
“Of course he is,” the USD shrugged. “But keep watching—this is where he starts to get all philosophical on us.”
Interrogator: The people can be wrong, of course. Look at how the German electorate voted in Hitler.
Ahmed: Then who’s to say that the people of the world aren’t wrong about interfering in Somalia’s internal affairs?
Interrogator: You have murdered huge numbers of your own countrymen.
Ahmed: We had no choice.
Interrogator: Are you honestly expecting me to accept that in the space of the last six months you have come to believe that there were all these people in your midst that you now just had to kill? I don’t accept that people can just flip a switch and go from living harmoniously with their neighbors to wanting to kill them just like that.
Ahmed: And yet that’s exactly what happened.
Interrogator: But why?
Ahmed: Who knows? All I know is that we had good reason to kill them.
Interrogator: And yet one year ago such a notion would have been inconceivable to you.
Ahmed: That’s right … you’re probably right about that.