End of the road for the "Ugly Americans"

It's the first thing most of us are told before going abroad: "Don't be an Ugly American." We're reminded — by our teachers, by the government, by travel websites — that we are all ambassadors of our country. People abroad will judge our country by the actions of the individuals they meet.

The Ugly American was the title of a popular novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, published in 1958 and made into a film in 1963. It tells the story of American government employees in a fictional country in southeast Asia (presumably Vietnam). Their arrogance and cultural narrow-mindedness fail to win acceptance from the local people, who increasingly turn to anti-colonialism and communism.

Since that time, the phrase "Ugly American" has come to mean loud, rude and sometimes drunken tourists who show little interest in the local culture and who complain that things aren't like they are at home. After the Americans, it was German tourists who got this reputation. These days, it's loud Spaniards and drunken English who often embarrass their home countries.

A private army

Since 9/11, Americans have been traveling a lot less to most parts of the world, but one nation in particular has seen a lot of them: Iraq. The more than 100,000 troops occupying the country since 2003 have been accompanied by at least as many "contractors" — people hired to do whatever needs to be done — because there aren't enough soldiers. Some of these contractors have built schools and roads. Others have cooked meals for the soldiers. And still others have done the actual work of the soldiers — guarding convoys and patrolling the streets of major Iraqi cities.

Many of the soldiers were uncomfortable with this, because the contractors were getting paid up to five times as much to do out of a sense of enterprise what the soldiers were doing out of a sense of duty.

But a larger problem was that, while the military operated under a strict code of conduct, the contractors were free to do things as they wished. The U.S. occupational government first declared them immune to prosecution under U.S. or Iraqi law. When Iraq became a sovereign country, the U.S. pressured the Iraqi government into keeping this rule in place.

By numerous accounts (some documented on video), the employees of one contracting company, Blackwater, routinely terrorized the citizens of several Iraqi cities by driving down the middle of city streets, firing weapons at other vehicles, and shouting insults at passers-by. Iraqi insurgents took revenge by publicly hanging the bodies of four Blackwater employees from a bridge in Fallujah in 2004. In 2007, things took an even nastier turn when Blackwater employees fired weapons into a crowd in Baghdad from the back of a truck, killing 17 civilians.

$100,000 for each Iraqi

In the spring of 2009, Blackwater left, when the Iraqi government refused to renew its license to be in Iraq, but it wasn't forgotten. Two weeks ago, an American judge dismissed a case against five of the Blackwater employees in the 2007 incident on a technicality. The shouts of anger in Iraq were deafening.

The Iraqi government has been threatening legal action against the ugliest of the Ugly Americans. And guess what? The threat worked. Last week, Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) announced that, in November, it had agreed out of court to pay a settlement to the families of several victims. Reports estimate the amount to be $100,000 for each person killed and $30,000 for each one wounded. The families are unhappy with the amount, but accepted the settlement last week.

The fact that it's been the Iraqi government putting pressure on the U.S., and not the reverse, proves that a functioning civil society is returning to Iraq — and that the U.S. mission there is complete. Perhaps they will one day even welcome American tourists — at least those who are on their best behavior.

* Recommended reading: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill gives an in-depth look at America's paramilitary in events up to 2006. First edition 2007, second edition 2008.