Neoliberal Mercenaries

There have always been mercenaries in war. Soldier of Fortune magazine has been popular for real mercenaries and wanna be's for a long time. Even the notion of a professional army like most countries have is a kind of mercenary operation. When you have individuals from West Virginia (Jessica Lynch and Sabrina Harmon) joining up just so they can pay for college, I believe you have mercenaries. However, that's one kind of mercenary, and the outside contractor phenomenon is entirely different. Now, we not only hire soldiers, we hire interrogators and inteligence analysts, truck drivers and supply clerks. There are a large number of contractors over in Iraq that aren't soldiers in the usual sense of the word. This is the privatization of war. Now, that might be a good thing for those getting the contracts, but how do you as a government make sure they do your bidding. Might they not come to be armies in the cause of some other goal than your foreign policy? I think we're seeing this right now in Iraq. The contractors are much freer to carry out more "aggressive" interrogation techniques than the military. We told them we wanted information, and they went about getting it for us in the most cost-effective way. I mean the bottom line is getting results for the customer, right? Are you gonna quibble over how exactly you satisfied the customer? Can we as a nation allow our government to sell the achievement of our interests to a group of corporations with profit as the motive? We're walking on mighty thin ice here, and I think it just cracked.
- posted by Marcos @ 4:40 PM