Send In the Hessians

So says Max Boot:

But perhaps there is a way to stop the killing even without sending an American or European army. Send a private army. A number of commercial security firms such as Blackwater USA are willing, for the right price, to send their own forces, made up in large part of veterans of Western militaries, to stop the genocide.

We know from experience that such private units would be far more effective than any U.N. peacekeepers. In the 1990s, the South African firm Executive Outcomes and the British firm Sandline made quick work of rebel movements in Angola and Sierra Leone. Critics complain that these mercenaries offered only a temporary respite from the violence, but that was all they were hired to do. Presumably longer-term contracts could create longer-term security, and at a fraction of the cost of a U.N. mission.

Yet this solution is deemed unacceptable by the moral giants who run the United Nations. They claim that it is objectionable to employ — sniff — mercenaries. More objectionable, it seems, than passing empty resolutions, sending ineffectual peacekeeping forces and letting genocide continue.

Boot conveniently fails to note that mercenaries don't fall under any laws or rules.

We're seeing an increasing acceptance of these modern-day Hessians by the "big thinkers" (Hello, Ted Koppel! ) in this country and we're seeing these modern-day Hessians already in use in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and even New Orleans. Given the state of the National Guards - thanks, George! - come the next hurricane, or earthquake, or flood, I imagine we'll have to rely on Blackwater et al to maintain order.

In some historical document a guy named Thomas Jefferson wrote:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Civilized nations don't use mercenaries. Are we a civilized nation?


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