This guy is fishing for a movie deal
My nephew sent me a link to this article at Philly.com by Chris Hedges titled “What if our mercenaries turn on us?” Boy, oh boy. If you read this and come away saying to yourself “you know, that could happen”, you’re on crack. Even though I replied to my nephew already, I thought it was worth posting here as well…
[Re: Blackwater aligns with the Bush administration and the religious right...] Actually, it makes sense for them to align that way. The regime is simply more favorable to their business model. No different than an environment-protection group, education organization, or labor union aligning with a more democrat-oriented regime. They attach to the bigger fish that doesn’t turn to eat them.
Most contractors feel they are vastly more patriotic in nature than regular forces. They find the “benefits” more appealing: greater flexibility in the field, and fewer political guidelines overall. They are adrenaline starved, pro-USA grunts that are (usually) fed up with the restrictions and rules that apply to regular military operations. They feel that regular service doesn’t allow them enough latitude to “do what needs to be done” to win a war. Add to that - that many have families in the US that they feel they are “protecting”, and you have a recipe for higher probability of NOT “turning” than most regular forces.
The press is missing the point. We’re simply following the path laid by the French and English. It just took us longer to figure out how much latitude this new “direction” affords us in sticky situations. The Foreign Legion and the Gurkhas are but two examples that we’re trying to follow after. The Russians have their contracted help as well.
One of the biggest problems we’re seeing, maybe *the* biggest, is that we’ve not yet figured out how to (or why) segregate the regular forces from contracted forces in the field of operations. The examples cited above are rarely placed into a given conflict together. They are usually relegate to specific (or general) jurisdictions, or simply entirely different conflicts or theaters of conflict. The reason is obvious: a single strategic initiative executed by two different tactical approaches, is going to fail. Even if they are not diametrically opposed views, confusion and redundancy will create major problems. Plenty of those have been reported already in Iraq, some in Afghanistan, etc. Our government just hasn’t spent enough on outside analyst reports yet to figure that out. They could save a lot of money by simply asking either our own generals, or French, British, etc. But that would be too easy (and they probably have a quota for paying consultants to report that on the proper letterhead).
Aside from contracted military ops, there are more obscure, yet more significant efforts underway: contracted intelligence for one. I don’t even need to explain why it is more prudent to have contractors interrogating captives than government employees. National boundaries don’t apply. Just like BW and other military-oriented contractors, the laws become vague as well. That affords even greater flexibility. Plausible deniability, etc. The recent exposure of so-called “secret prisons” uncovered in Poland and Romania, which are said to be run by the CIA, will only add more weight to the push for contracted intelligence. Over the next 50 years it will be interesting to see how far this goes. Can you imagine contracted replacements for the FBI? DEA? FDA? FAA? Don’t laugh. As ridiculous as it may seem, you can’t honestly rule it out either. Stranger things have happened in our history.
