Should the US Army Employ mercenary Soldiers?

Maybe the way to fight unpopular wars is to hire soldiers from other armies. take the British-for years they hired nepalese soldiers 9the “Ghurkas”) who proved to be efficient, capable soldiers. or the french-with their famous “Foreign Legion”. So, would the US Army benefit from having a large mercenary force by its side?

I thought we did?

A huge amount of the people in Iraq are private contractors, who are exhorbitantly expensive and providing a shoddy service in many instances. From what I can tell Blackwater’s service is a fairly good one but they are far more expensive than the military. However, the US has for many years used mercenaries to fight unpopular conflicts. Those fought by mercenaries rarely make the front page in the US.

No. We pay more money for our armed forces than everybody else on the planet combined. Why shouldn’t that money buy enough soldiers to do the job?

If I were made President tomorrow, one of the first things I would do would be to move to nationalize Blackwater and the other “security contractors” running around Baghdad playing soldier. You wanna play soldier, you gotta play by the rules and get paid the same rate as the other poor schlubs who want to serve their country the right way.

You can’t nationalize Blackwater. Blackwater isn’t a material resource, it’s a temp agency for soldiers. The Chilean mercenaries fighting for the Blackwater in Iraq don’t have to accept American soldiers wages if they don’t want to. Blackwater provides security for many corporate clients as well, and they are often sent on the more dangerous missions because their deaths aren’t reported in American newspapers as casualties for our side.

I think if you looked at the history of conflicts America was involved in over the last century, you’d be surprised at how many you’d never heard of because they were fought largely by mercenary forces.

Do you have examples of these wars?

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/stock1.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11409.htm

Odds are that if there is a conflict there is CIA material involvement. It’s hard to track because it’s about the money trail, and that’s generally hidden. Get a shell corporation to hire mercenaries, funnel the money through a couple of banks in foreign countries and you have plausible deniability. It’s just the way we do business.

A good book on the subject is “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”.

As with Operation Zapata, more commonly known as “The Bay of Pigs”, we don’t hear about it unless it goes to shit.

I have to agree with this, there’s not really any feasible way you can nationalize a private security concern. You can nationalize the actual corporation, if it is indeed a U.S. corporation. Although exactly how you would go about doing that under our legal system I’m not sure, nationalizing private corporations isn’t commonly done in the United States, although there have been some examples (Amtrak) it’s usually done with the cooperation of business interests not in opposition to them.

And, even if you nationalize the corporation, that doesn’t mean its employees have to abide by the wages you set, there are private employment opportunities for mercenaries the world over and if you try to pay them the same pay as a U.S. soldier they’ll just go elsewhere.

Anyway, as for the question at hand, yes we should and yes we do. Mercenaries have, throughout human history shown themselves to be valuable at times. The trick is of course making sure you’re hiring the right mercenaries for the right job. Like with any other product or service, sometimes you’ll buy something that doesn’t perform how you want, that’s just the nature of these things. Just because a few mercenaries have proven to be bad eggs doesn’t mean they can’t be a valuable resource.

The Ghurkas are an elite force (selected from a vast number of Nepalese that volunteer every year) and have been part of the British Army for at least a century and continue to be today. They are ferocious and loyal, and you don’t want to meet them in hand to hand. They are uniformed soldiers of HM, most definitely not mercenaries. There is also a Ghurka regiment in the Indian Army.

The French Foreign Legion is likewise not a mercenary outfit, they are uniformed soldiers in the French Army. They are paid standard soldiers salaries, and after a fixed term of service recieve French Citizenship.

Comparing either of these units to the likes of Blackwater, Sandline or Executive Outcomes is insulting.

That’s not really the same thing. Sure we funded dissident groups, but that’s a long ways away from hiring a bunch of Hessiens to fight our wars.

Who do you think trains the dissident groups how to use the weapons we sell them?

That’s not the difference. Mercenaries are professional soldiers. They fight for money. The groups you mentioned are revolutionary/dissident groups that fight because they want to change the government of their native land.

The point is that mercenaries get mixed up in. What do you think the term “CIA contractors” is a euphemism for?

The private contractors in Iraq are not-quite-mercenaries in one respect: they do not engage in purely offensive operations, and claim to have no desire to. That said, I do have to wonder just how “proactive” some of their security operations are.

Blackwater is most definitely a strike force.

More on Blackwater.

When Bush announced the formation of the new Department of Homeland Security some accused him of trying to create a “Praetorian Guard,” but it appears Blackwater is filling that role.

Talking point anyone? ;p

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

Brainglutton That applies to a bygone era and not a capitalist system. You’d probably find the life of Erik Prince to be rather fascinating. He seems like a true believer to me.