It has taken seven years for justice to be done for the 14 victims of the murderous attack by US Blackwater Security guards in a busy Baghdad square.



A US jury this week found four guards guilty of the slaying. It rejected defense arguments that the men had opened fire because they believed that they were about to come under attack from insurgents. One damning piece of evidence against them was the testimony of two army officers who arrived in the square almost immediately after the massacre. They had seen no evidence of any insurgent attack, just the bodies of 14 dead or dying innocents and 18 other Iraqis who had been injured in a hail of Blackwater bullets. 



The trial has been important in that it has demonstrated virtually everything that was wrong about George W Bush’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq.  It has in effect also convicted US policy. Put bluntly, once their war machine had all too efficiently blasted aside Saddam’s army, the Americans had not a clue what to do next. They had blithely assumed that the welcome they received from many Iraqis would somehow transform itself into a stable,

democratic government. To make sure this could happen, US chiefs in the Coalition Provisional Authority exiled all the surviving “bad guys” - Saddam’s police and soldiers - who promptly went underground and formed the original core of the insurgency.



It is now clear that the triumphant Bush White House had zero understanding of the subtleties and complexities of Iraqi society. It could think only in terms of military might and the dollars US corporations could earn rebuilding infrastructure devastated in American air raids and  operating the rundown Iraqi oil sector.



The freewheeling, free market insouciance with which Washington approached its inept and haphazard rebuilding of Iraq involved thousands of US contractors, to the quiet fury of America’s allies in the Coalition, who had expected a better share of the reconstruction deals.



As the security situation deteriorated and US forces were needed back on the battlefield, Washington turned to dozens of private security firms to protect US firms and institutions. The State Department hired Blackwater.  It quickly became apparent that these heavily-armed, unaccountable private militias were getting out of control. Staffed by former soldiers or civilian special forces wannabes, Blackwater’s operations were typical of the arrogant and very often totally ineffective efforts of many private security firms.



Yet when Washington sent investigators to check out Blackwater, they were threatened with death by a Blackwater employee at a meeting in the US embassy attended by top diplomats. The two investigators were withdrawn at the embassy’s request because their enquiries were “disruptive”.



Nothing could better characterize the amoral nature of US behavior in Iraq and demonstrate how the proclaimed “making Iraq safe for democracy”, almost immediately morphed into making the conquered country safe for American big business and often sinister special interest groups. Having resourced Al-Qaeda with fired soldiers and policemen, the Coalition Provisional Authority, by its contemptuous neo-colonial treatment of Iraq, gave the insurgents the cause around which to rally opposition.



Blackwater epitomized the ignorant brute force that destroyed both the US occupation and so tragically, Iraq’s chances of a successful recovery. Yet it is unlikely that Washington will draw the lesson from the conviction of the four Blackwater thugs. Republican politicians are now busy claiming that Obama should never have withdrawn the military from Iraq. Some people never learn.