Comments on: Mercenaries

Comment on Mercenaries by: Ian Lance Taylor

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:34:59 +0000

I suppose that if the U.S. never runs out of wars, then there is no problem of bringing mercenaries back home.

Comment on Mercenaries by: ncm

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:01:31 +0000

The amount of money handed over to individual merc outfits in this decade is orders of magnitude larger than is typical of government grants for other purposes, with much less opportunity for public scrutiny (not just per-dollar, but even per-grant). So, two more ways it is worse.

Comment on Mercenaries by: etbe

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:21:04 +0000

ncm: Your point is fair, but it should also be noted that the same thing happens with all the industries that get government assistance. It seems to me that the only way that the war business is worse than the farming business in this regard is that people get killed in wars.

Of course there are some countries running short of food stocks now, so I guess that mis-managing the farming part of the economy can kill too.

Comment on Mercenaries by: ncm

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:10:57 +0000

etbe: In other words, pre-packaged organized crime, with government connections already in place. Collecting revenue has always been the most stressful part of operating a crime syndicate, with avoiding legal scrutiny a close second. Letting the IRS do the work for you, and just getting quarterly checks from the GAO, and with effectively no risk of prosecution, has to be a more relaxing way to operate.

When no-bid contracts escape all scrutiny, isn’t blackmail just as good a reason to issue a contract as any other?

Comment on Mercenaries by: etbe

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:56:17 +0000

Another issue is what the mercenaries will do once the war is over. Part of the current problem in Russia is that they trained a huge number of people to serve in the military, intelligence, and internal-security agencies. When the USSR collapsed those people had no jobs and their skills were a better fit for criminal employment than anything legal.

I have the impression that any soldier who is honourably discharged is eligible for employment in a police force, while many currently serving mercenaries might not pass the background checks. Also the fact that police are well paid by soldier standards but poorly paid by merenary standards suggests that a law enforcement career will be more desirable to soldiers than mercs.

Comment on Mercenaries by: ncm

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:31:18 +0000

The danger of mercenaries isn’t in their number (which remains small) but in their effect on government. Billions spent maintaining regular soldiers has little political effect, aside from wasteful weapons system projects. Billions of dollars handed out to mercenary contractors isn’t just spent on MREs and HMVs, it comes back to political campaigns and dirty tricks that subvert democracy. We see a similar effect in the privatized “Prison Industry”, which has succeeded in driving the U.S.’s incarceration rate to the highest in the world.

Blackwater is already making preparations to operate within the U.S., and spending heavily on lobbying to get such assignments.