Have Gun Will Travel

Mr. Brooks:

In response to your comment to my item below Mercs or Private Military Companies, first let me say I have no doubts or question regarding the privatization of armies and the organized campaign to make the hired gun respectable. Having read your comments at IPOA online, it's likely you consider my skepticism toward PMCs as coming from one who, to use your words, has been struck "by emotional cords, making rational assessment difficult." You describe those who would use the term mercenary as "sensationalists" seeking to "demonize the companies." I do call a front a front, a merc a merc.

In your own words "PMCs are amenable to regulation but need financial incentive to do so." You claim other, less regulated companies will step in to undercut those companies "burdened by regulations." Sounds like nothing more than buy-us-a-conscience.

You commented in the UK Green paper that "most regulations" dealing with "human rights and accountability will be readily accepted by the PMCs who already assume standards instilled in typical Western militaries." With the awareness of Abu Ghraib, flattening Fallujah, the public's disinterest and government's lack of accountability, I don't find that statement offering assurance that private mercenaries, funded by government incentives and/or corporate coffers, will not abuse, torture, or raze the village in order to bring stability under the oxymoronic euphemism "armed peace" operations. With our new AG declaring the Geneva Convention "quaint" the assurance of instilling typical Western standards is also quite quaint.

The South African mercenary company Executive Outcomes (which your paper mentioned) has claimed "its sole purpose was to bring stability to the region by supporting legitimate governments in their defense against armed rebels." (That definition qualifies the likes of Pinochet and Khmer Rouge.) But basically, EO mercenaries were maintaining the status quo. The Sierra Leone Sandline operation raised enough stink regarding illegal arms trafficking, that Britain had to agree to make up new rules to play by. Tim Spicer, of Sandline fame, now doing lucrative "peace work" with contracts in Iraq. In your own words Sandline was "remarkably effective." Presumably you refer to saving lives. But saving lives is secondary to protecting the resources of the employer aka "legitimate government."

"Legitimate governments" are often legitimate only when the US deems them so. Particularly when oil, gold, copper, minerals, diamonds, coca, etc. are involved. We can claim PMCs could have averted Rwanda, or Darfur, or the next one and the next one, in the continuous business cycle of ending conflicts. We can call PMCs "consultants" or "shareholders" or "peace enforcers" but they will still be hired guns protecting "legitimate governments" aka responsive to corporate interests. We could simply pay our troops bigger bucks and get the same thing, without the loss of tax payments which occurs when new business privatization run to the trough of government funding and subsidy. I expect tax free think tanks and foundations for the support and promotion of mercenaries will join the 501s.

I do give you the benefit of the doubt, for now; you may sincerely believe that a PMC's war is peace. However, there's a lot of money to be made from the inbreeding of paramilitary and commercial ventures, and for the 501 non-profit organizations which give their copulation the cover of respectability.