Prince is often called a “conservative Catholic” in the various articles and exposés written on his company’s activities. For all of his supposed traditionalism, he must have had a rather elastic interpretation of the Church’s Just War Doctrine to support a U.S. policy of preemptive war and occupation. Prince’s business decisions place him in the camp of neoconservatives such as George Weigel and Michael Novak, Catholics who embrace globalized modernity and advocate armed social engineering abroad to further its spread.
Judging from his actions, Blackwater’s founder adheres to the widely-held belief that the United States is called to redeem the world through democracy and “free markets.” This way of thought finds America to be the grand instrument of God’s will, which curiously conforms to the interests of U.S. policy and financial elites. Many self-proclaimed religious conservatives misguidedly place their faith in an only nominally “Christian” kingdom of this world rather than the Kingdom of God, and assist the triumph of profane materialism. The Blackwater scandal might just seem like a case of life imitating bad art on the level of a Dan Brown novel. But there is a more unsettling tendency at work here—the appropriation of faith and tradition for profoundly anti-traditional and anti-Christian ends. Erik Prince, envisioning his mercenary company as a successor to the Templar order, could create only a deadly counterfeit.
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater By RAY MCGOVERN
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