Hired Guns
Countries that are reluctant to send members of their armed forces to be part of a peace keeping force, should have the option of sending experienced retired military personnel, much as they do in Afghanistan and Iraq today. Outsource the job to mercenaries. Mercenaries used to dominate warfare. The “Hessians” who served Britain in America’s War of Independence ─ many were actually from other German states ─ became notorious among the colonists for their brutality. Foreigners have formed a major part of every army in the world until the French Revolution. Their outlook was pithily expressed by a 17th-century soldier who said: “We serve our master honestly, it is no matter what master we serve.”
There are at least 20,000 private cowboys employed in Iraq alone, plus the thousands in Afghanistan. There is one private security employee for every four U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. Among foreign troop contingents they are second in number ─ and in casualties ─ only to the U.S. military. Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Corporate Warrior,” quips: “President George W. Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ might thus be more aptly described as the ‘coalition of the billing.”
Many of the recruits stem from former police and military forces in the Philippines, Peru and Ecuador. Given crash courses ─ that don’t prepare them for armed conflicts. Maybe that’s why they call them crash courses? They violate human rights because they are armed. While U.S. and European mercenaries working in war zones make as much as $10,000 a month, a Peruvians doing the same job seldom make more than $1,000 ─ with the privilege of having their working rights violated.
It was thanks largely to “free lances” (the origin of that now common term) that absolute monarchs managed to consolidate their power in Europe and carve out vast overseas empires. Private entities like the Dutch and English East India Companies even marshaled their own armies and navies to defend their domains. No different than Halliburton and many other corporations doing business in dangerous neighborhoods do today.
Mercenaries have been effective in stopping human-rights abuses. In 1995-96, Executive Outcomes, a South African firm working for the government of Sierra Leone, made minced meat of a savage rebel movement known as the Revolutionary United Front that was notorious for chopping off the limbs of its victims. As a result, Sierra Leone was able to hold its first free election in decades. The now-defunct Executive Outcomes also helped the Angolan government quell a long-running insurgency by Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, leading to the signing of a peace accord in 1994. Another private firm, MPRI, helped to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia in 1995 by organizing the Croatian military offensive that stopped Serbian aggression.
Hired gunslingers, with state of the art equipment like aircraft carriers, could be equally effective in stopping the campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia in Darfur. Sounds like a weed that should be smoked. They can end starvation and human rights abuses in places like Cambodia, Myanmar, Mosambique and North Korea. I agree with Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of “War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today,” who suggests mercenary firms could be employed by a global organization like the GSC, by an ad hoc group of concerned nations, or even by philanthropists like Bill Gates or George Soros.
There are at least 20,000 private cowboys employed in Iraq alone, plus the thousands in Afghanistan. There is one private security employee for every four U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. Among foreign troop contingents they are second in number ─ and in casualties ─ only to the U.S. military. Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Corporate Warrior,” quips: “President George W. Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ might thus be more aptly described as the ‘coalition of the billing.”
Many of the recruits stem from former police and military forces in the Philippines, Peru and Ecuador. Given crash courses ─ that don’t prepare them for armed conflicts. Maybe that’s why they call them crash courses? They violate human rights because they are armed. While U.S. and European mercenaries working in war zones make as much as $10,000 a month, a Peruvians doing the same job seldom make more than $1,000 ─ with the privilege of having their working rights violated.
It was thanks largely to “free lances” (the origin of that now common term) that absolute monarchs managed to consolidate their power in Europe and carve out vast overseas empires. Private entities like the Dutch and English East India Companies even marshaled their own armies and navies to defend their domains. No different than Halliburton and many other corporations doing business in dangerous neighborhoods do today.
Mercenaries have been effective in stopping human-rights abuses. In 1995-96, Executive Outcomes, a South African firm working for the government of Sierra Leone, made minced meat of a savage rebel movement known as the Revolutionary United Front that was notorious for chopping off the limbs of its victims. As a result, Sierra Leone was able to hold its first free election in decades. The now-defunct Executive Outcomes also helped the Angolan government quell a long-running insurgency by Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, leading to the signing of a peace accord in 1994. Another private firm, MPRI, helped to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia in 1995 by organizing the Croatian military offensive that stopped Serbian aggression.
Hired gunslingers, with state of the art equipment like aircraft carriers, could be equally effective in stopping the campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia in Darfur. Sounds like a weed that should be smoked. They can end starvation and human rights abuses in places like Cambodia, Myanmar, Mosambique and North Korea. I agree with Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of “War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today,” who suggests mercenary firms could be employed by a global organization like the GSC, by an ad hoc group of concerned nations, or even by philanthropists like Bill Gates or George Soros.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 8:03 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home