Erik Prince – Profiting from war and now war games

It is now official. There is a new video game that was approved by former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince.

MLive posted a story today announcing the release of the new first person shooter video-game, Blackwater. In the brief MLive story it quotes Prince who says his father inspired him to create the game. “He taught me to appreciate the opportunities that America offers to innovators.”

Erik Prince is of course referring to Edgar Prince, founder of the family business and funder of numerous far right causes such as anti-gay, anti-abortion and political entities such as the Council for National Policy and the Free Congress Foundation.

In this case it seems that Erik Prince is suggesting that he is an innovator by licensing a game based on a company he created that was essentially a group of private mercenaries. Not only was Blackwater a private mercenary group, it made most of its money from taxpayer funded government contracts to do work in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The brief Mlive story ends by saying that Prince sold Blackwater, “after it became embroiled in controversy over its role in supporting the U.S. military’s efforts to combat terrorism.”

Such a statement not only sanitizes the role that Blackwater played in the so-called War on Terror, it ignores the facts.

As Jeremy Scahill, author of the best book on Blackwater has noted, the company was charged with murdering numerous Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, Iraq several years ago. Blackwater has also been implicated in killing civilians in Afghanistan and CIA sponsored assassination programs.

The murder of civilians and targeted assassination programs by Blackwater employees in no way should be referred to as “controversy” and lending your name to a first-person shooter video game does not absolve you of crimes against humanity.