A Close Look at DMZ part 6: Blackwater Meets Haliburton Meets Evil Without Nuance

Remember when I said at the beginning that DMZ doesn't shy away from arguing a viewpoint? There's probably no better example in the series than how Brian Wood depicts the fictional company Trustwell, an entity that is an amalgamation of multinational corporations and military contractors. Both kinds of entities were often subjects of Iraq War discourse as the United States' nation building efforts stretched on.

Frequently talked about in the years preceding DMZ's publication was Halburton, an oil services company that received lucrative contracts and "sweetheart" deals, and whose former CEO was the sitting vice president, Dick Cheney. Haliburton, of course, was hardly the only American corporation profiting off efforts to rebuild Iraq. And reconstruction efforts weren't the only thing enriching American companies.

Military contractors were a significant part of the United States' presence in Iraq. In 2007 the Defense Depart concluded that almost 160,000 private contractors were employed in Iraq (roughly equal to the number of U.S. troops in the country at the time). With American military forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq it was necessary to supplement their numbers. In 2007, several months after this story arc was published, the military contractor Blackwater was involved in an incident that became known as the Nisour Square Massacre.

Given all that, it makes for these subjects to be explored in the series. And it's not really inappropriate to make an unambiguous judgment about them. At a certain point, though, criticism becomes farce.

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 13-17.

Corruption, Terrorism, and Journalism

Trustwell, an American corporation that gets generous contracts from the government, is handling reconstruction in the DMZ.  Since there's no form of governmental authority representing the DMZ, Trustwell operates with a lot of autonomy. There are UN peacekeepers in the DMZ, but security for the projects is mainly handled by Trustwell's private military. It's generally believed, at least from what Matty says, that Trustwell is corrupt. But because of their connections in the government and the money they can throw around they're untouchable.

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In the wake of "Body of a Journalist" Matty is concerned about maintaining a high profile, figuring that if he stays in the public eye there's less chance of retaliation against him when Viktor Ferguson's murder is no longer newsworthy. His solution to this problem is to go undercover inside Trustwell. He makes an arrangement with Kelly Connolly from Independent World News, who he's still in a relationship with, to give her network the exclusive when Matty gets his story.

Using a fake name Matty started working for Trustwell along with all the other day laborers. His only connection to the outside world is a secure phone Matty can use to contact Kelly.

Trustwell's security is brutal when there's any kind of action, perceived or otherwise, taken against them. Matty suffers more than a few beatings. One such occasion comes after a suicide bombing on one of their trucks.

One night in the cafeteria, after two weeks of no progress, Matty watches someone pull out a detonator and blow up a bomb in a Trustwell warehouse. Matty doesn't report the bomber to anyone and the next day he's accosted by several men of vaguely Middle Eastern descent. As a result of him staying quiet about the bombing, they bring him into their cell, promising that he'll make money if he stays with them. The head of the cell talks about how Trustwell overworks them, treats them like "animals", and pays them next to nothing.

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Matty doesn't think much of what he's gotten involved in until the cell pays him some money because a job was carried out successfully. He starts to reconsider his situation, but is abducted shortly after. His phone connecting him to Kelly is taken, and he's tortured. Matty is under the impression that Trustwell is behind it, trying to get information on the terrorist cell. Matty holds out for days, and it's only when they put a gun to the back of his head, apparently intending to kill him, that Matty breaks and tells them everything he knows.

It turns out that Matty's torturers are actually members of the cell trying to find out how far he is willing to go for them. The fact that Matty broke only in the face of certain death is no problem. The cell leader explains that there's a difference between the true believers and the ones, like him, that are in it for the "business". As a reward for Matty's loyalty the cell returns his phone and reward him with a posh room, a comfortable bed, good food, and a woman (who Matty does sleep with). But in the morning Matty is dismayed to wake up and find the cell leader helping the woman, Amina, into a suicide vest.

Amina's target is a press conference at the old United Nations building with high ranking dignitaries from the UN, US, and Trustwell. The cell sends Matty with her to ensure that she gets there and detonates. If she has second thoughts they will detonate remotely. They also have gunmen on the roof in case Matty has any second thoughts.

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It's not until Matty and Amina are almost to the barricades holding the crowd back that Matty grabs Amina, leads her away, and makes out with her in an alley as a pretext to rip the bomb off her and throw it away. The cell detonates it remotely, but it's too distant to hurt anyone. Amina is furious, but before she can do anything to Matty the gunmen open fire on them. Across town, as Amina and Matty are running for their lives, the motorcade rushing the dignitaries away from the press conference drives over a bomb that the cell planted as a backup.

Matty and Amina manage to escape. Matty ships Amina off to a friend of Zee's named Jamal (who we last saw in the guidebook issue) on the pretext of keeping her safe. Free States Commander hooks Matty up with a mole working for Trustwell security who tells Matty that Trustwell is bankrolling the terrorists as a way to increase demand for their services and drive out everyone else. After that, alone and with no one else to turn to, Matty calls Kelly and tells her everything that happens. Unfortunately the terrorist cell tapped the phone before returning it to Matty, and one of the men from the cell finds Matty so he can kill him. After escaping that attack, Matty realizes Amina, Jamal, and Jamal's people are in danger so he takes off through the city to warn them.

When Matty arrives at Jamal's pseudo co-op he's surprised to discover that not only are they not in danger from the terrorist cell, but also that the Free States Commander captured them. FS Commander's plan is to blackmail Trustwell in order to force concessions from the United States and put the Free States in a position to win the war. FS Commander wants to use Matty to record confessions from his terror cell as well as those of several other captured cells. Matty, who still has Kelly's phone, dials her so she can listen in on everything the terrorists say. He pays lip service to doing this for the good of the DMZ, but ultimately he was angry that he would lose the story and Kelly would lose her exclusive.

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The Free States men scatter as UN peacekeepers arrive to secure the terrorists. Matty avoids Kelly, finding it difficult to reconcile who he has become with who he was before going undercover. But his choice to reveal the story brings Zee closer to him because she considers it the most selfless thing he's done since his arrival. Meanwhile Amina is abandoned by everybody, left to try and make her way through the DMZ alone, destitute, and with no support.

Real World Influence

Brian Wood said in an interview that this arc was very much a "ripped from the headlines" creation. It was driven by his interest in companies that are arguably nothing more than war profiteers. And while "Public Works" does include a few smaller themes worth examining, when we examine DMZ's politics there is little to no nuance in the overarching story arc.

Before getting too deep into this story's events it's important to point out that Matty is not a real reporter. He has no experience beyond the little bit he's tried to acquire solely on his own since getting stuck in the DMZ. He had no real support for his undercover operation (I'm not at all sure what Kelly could have done for Matty if he needed help), and his whole reason for doing it was build to himself up in the public eye. So it's not surprising that Matty ended up in over his head and making extraordinarily questionable decisions.

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Pretty much all of Matty's poor choices flow from his interaction with the terrorist cell that makes up the bulk of "Public Works" while Trustwell looms in the background. Matty watches a member of the cell detonate a bomb and then spends time in their company while engaged in any number of activities that could put lives at risk. He only seems to have second thoughts after he gets paid. As important as Matty may consider this story (though he established from the start that his investigation isn't actually motivated by any greater sense of journalism), he had the ability to contact Kelly. He may have lost the fame generated by reporting on Trustwell, but on the other hand he could have helped bring down an actual terrorist cell and potentially save lives.

The idea doesn't even cross his mind, though, and the only reason he even reveals the connection between the terrorists and Trustwell is because he doesn't want to lose his story. Unfortunately "Public Works" doesn't linger on these decisions, handwaving away potential legal difficulties as an ends-justifies-the-means thing because he exposed Trustwell. The final issue considers Matty's emotional turmoil for just one page. He does express a moment of shock in three panels at the end when he sees what's become of Amina, but the issue promptly ends before that can be examined further. While the issue doesn't try to make excuses for what Matty did, it also doesn't examine whether Matty does or should face consequences.

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The terrorist cell that Matty gets caught up in is rather two dimensional. The only thing that deviates from the pop culture stereotype is that the cell is getting paid to cause problems. Beyond that they blow things up, kill people, torture to prove loyalty, and exploit would-be martyrs as suicide bombers. The make up of the cell is also exactly what the public largely imagined terrorists to be in 2007. In fact there is almost certainly a significant part of the population that still only pictures people like this when they think of terrorists. This decision resulted from a conversation between Vertigo editor Will Dennis who called Brian Wood on making all of his villains white. But so far all the "bad guys" in the series, aside from the guy who stole Matty's credentials in "Crosstown", have been parts of the United States military or Free States organization. Could Wood, Burchielli, or Cox have made some of these soldiers something other than white? Sure. Was it an unfortunate oversight that neither of them thought to do that? Yes. If the critique is of these militaries as an institution, though, I'm not sure racial make up matters. And given that men in the US military are over 65% white, all white units are not impossible or perhaps even uncommon. This presentation of the terrorist cell as both not white but also generically Middle Eastern feeds into a claim Wood makes that has no basis in the published work.

Diversity That's Not Diverse

Wood's justification for the cell's ethnic/racial make up is that New York is a diverse city and that diversity wouldn't just disappear as a result of the war. On that matter Wood is almost certainly correct. In the same interview, though, Wood goes on to say that he believes under the circumstances at work in the DMZ race would become unimportant. The term "post-racial" is used. Wood will make this claim through characters multiple times in future issues. Unfortunately, DMZ doesn't actually back that up. In this instance we have the terrorist cell that is made up of 2007 usual suspects (except for one panel with a character that is probably white). Additionally, in the one scene where we see terrorists other than the cell Matty interacted with, there's no visual evidence that the cells are made up of anyone other than these vaguely Middle Eastern men. Even looking at the composition of the workers Trustwell uses, Matty appears to be the only white person save a couple panels when there might be one in the background. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the DMZ, Wilson runs Chinatown as a miniature ethnostate. So if we're keeping track: we have terrorists who are entirely Middle Eastern, we have day workers who are everything but white, and we Chinatown that doesn't welcome non-Chinese without its leader's express permission. The evidence to this point doesn't support any post-racial claims; rather, it simply reinforces stereotypes that already exist.

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Leaning into this stereotype is the character of Amina. Like the men in the cell, she is vaguely Middle Eastern. She is presented to Matty as a carnal reward, one that he does not turn down. The implications of this scene are easy to shrug off because such a scenario can be excused by a belief in someone else's cultural inferiority: "Of course they would do something like that." If we set aside the matter of Amina being a suicide bomber, it's worth considering how this scene might have played out if Amina was a white woman named Lisa. Would her being used as a thing rather than a person be more unpalatable? Are concerns about human trafficking stronger when the victim looks like you (regardless of your race)? Further, would we be surprised that Matty took advantage of a white woman? Would he even do it based on his character as established to this point? If Wood had been committed to a post-racial landscape, changing Amina to Lisa might have been the best way to prove it.

Moving beyond how Amina's place in an imaginary post-racial environment, she is a window for complex questions--by far the most complex in the story arc. Amina is one of those useful true believers the cell leader told Matty about. She is willing, even eager, to be a suicide bomber. Yet the cell has a fail safe to detonate her vest if she doesn't go through with it and a sniper on hand to shoot if she ditches the vest and runs. That such safeguards exist suggests that not all suicide bombers are eager to fulfill this role. Maybe they started out eager but the closer they got to their premeditated suicide the less willing they became.

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This is not the case with Amina. She hates this world and (from her point of view) wanted to go to heaven to escape it which she would have done if Matty hadn't interfered. And now, because of him, she is an outcast from her family and friends. Matty insists Amina is now free, but she hates him for what he's done because his freedom and her freedom are not the same thing. So when the story is over Amina has been transformed into a character we can feel a kind of sympathy for despite what she intended to do--her life as she knew it, for better or worse, has been ruined by Matty choosing that moment to interfere with the terrorist cell despite ignoring their prior behavior. It's fair to look at these events and wonder whether Matty would have taken action if he hadn't been escorting Amina to the target. Given the very black and white nature of "Public Works", the Amina character arc is a welcome shade of gray.

Over the Top...Again

Moving beyond Amina's loss, Matty's decision making, and a debate over diversity, the story itself is relatively straightforward. The ending is a little vague. FS Commander intends to blackmail Trustwell to somehow win the war. But it's been well-established that the Free States are not fighting a traditional war: they don't have a cohesive army, they don't really hold territory, and they use asymmetrical warfare tactics. That FS Commander could force a settlement and solve all of those problems seems unlikely. But perhaps his blackmail is meant to win solely in New York. Even then, it's never explained how blackmailing Trustwell will force the United States' government's hand. At no point in the story is a connection between Trustwell's activities and the government implied. Based on what the mole reveals, Trustwell wants the United States' army out of the DMZ as well. FS Commander doesn't even make this claim despite his whole plan resting on this assumption. Unless Trustwell throws the US government under the bus (which strikes me as unlikely given that they're enriched by that same government) there's certain to be many layers of separation and a lot of plausible deniability between the two. This wrinkle doesn't really damage the ending; it's more of a curiosity that easily ignored in the fast ending. And in any case, the story wasn't top notch to begin with.

"Public Works" is in a way both simple and difficult to evaluate. I have the same problem here that I had in "Body of a Journalist" (though at least in story arc the offending plot point makes sense), except that this time the critique goes to the very premise of the story. Trustwell is employing terrorist cells to blow people up. Those cells are even using suicide bombers. Like the murder of Viktor Ferguson, this action by Trustwell removes any chance of raising stakes as far as Trustwell is concerned. A company willing to do this will do anything. This moves Trustwell into Snidely Whiplash or Boris and Natasha territory. Compelling antagonists and even outright villains are based on understandable motives; no one is the bad guy in their own story. The comeback could be that Trustwell is doing this to make money, but not matter how powerful simple greed might by, the actions Trustwell takes are wildly out of proportion. As I said in the beginning, Brian Wood pulls no punches in this series, and he has an undeniable point of view most of the time. In this case, though, his viewpoint handicaps the premise on which the story rests, moving it much closer to the realm of propaganda than compelling fiction.

Bomb Strikes With No Lasting Damage

This post: 1

Series Total: 5

Credits

Brian Wood: writer

Riccardo Burchielli: art

Jeromy Cox: colors

Jared K. Fletcher: letters

For an index of all Close Look at DMZ entries, jump back to the landing page here, and for an issue-by-issue commentary check out Twitter @theroncouch #BWDMZ.

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