Outsourcing War: I.F. Stone's Son on the Izzy Award to Jeremy Scahill

This
statement was written for tonight's celebration of the Izzy Award for
"special
achievement in independent media" -- named after journalist I.F. "Izzy"
Stone.
The Izzy -- awarded by Ithaca
College's
Park Center for
Independent
Media --
is being presented to Jeremy
Scahill
for human rights reporting that
elevated military contractor abuses to front-page news.

In
1953, my age group was required to register for the draft. I well
remember that
this lottery of life was a serious matter -- draftees only a year or two
older
than ourselves had already died in a Korean War not really over. Today,
the
United
States,
along with ninety other countries, has abandoned the draft in favor of
the use
of volunteers.

This use of volunteers -- although it has obvious
advantages -- has the unfortunate disadvantage of liberating the
Government's
decision to use military force from the political pressures that would
exist
were the sons of middle- and upper-class citizens subject to draft.

The

commercial outsourcing of the use of
force further distances the American political process from its
authorized
violence. Blackwater was not just providing personal security, it
trained more
than 40,000 people a year in military defensive and offensive
operations. Using
mostly no-bid contracts, it was making a mint out of war.

Blackwater
in
Iraq is a
descendent of Vietnam-era contractors like Brown and Root. I. F. Stone
recognized the corrosive impact of lucrative deals for these outfits,
and
Jeremy
Scahill has
shown that the role and influence of contractors are even greater now
than they
were in Vietnam.

In particular, as Jeremy has shown, outsourced force has been
harder to
control than conventional military force and has led to so much trouble
that the
Iraqi Government sought to expel them from Iraq.

Because of the
nature
of the outsourcing process -- combined with the hazardous situation in
Iraq --
Jeremy's important investigative reports have been hard-won -- requiring
courage,
commitment, and endurance.

So I can see why the Izzy Award
Committee
settled on Jeremy. And I can only approve since, whether he knows it or
not, he
and I are related.

He was born in 1974 when the movie "Andromeda

Strain", released a year or so before, was having a huge success. For
obscure
reasons, its handsome hero -- who saved the world with only ten seconds
to spare
-- was given my exact name, Dr. Jeremy Stone.

As a result, for a
few
years, the name "Jeremy" became very popular with new parents. And so I
have
quite a few of these nominal offspring of Jeremy
Scahill's
age.

What can I say? It seems that the Izzy Award selection
committee
has chosen, for its second award, some kind of grandson of I.F.
Stone!