Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Politics and Our Mercenaries

Many agree that 135,000 troops is not enough to occupy Iraq, Petraeus included. I was reading an interesting opinion piece online about the political nature of this war, and why private "contractors" are so prevalent. One of the most striking reasons is that the government does not have to report the deaths of our mercenaries.
"Since the troop "surge" started in January 2007, these numbers have accelerated -- contractors have been killed at a rate of nine per week. These figures mean that the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined. The losses are also far more than any single U.S. Army division has experienced."

The public isn't outraged by these deaths -they never hear about them. The extra money these mercenaries receive is keeping a lid on the bad news. If you believe in our system, you can't blame them individually. They make much more than the average American. But they aren't necessarily fighting for their country, they are fighting for their pocketbooks. In this case there is a capitalist incentive to fight, but no capitalist incentive to win (especially the hearts and minds of Iraqis).

2 comments:

The Gurz said...

Our government also has plausible deniability on all the destruction done by those mercenary groups.

Brian Hurley said...

This is the future. Privately financed armies. The ExxonMobil Militia, protecting their resources in Angola. The Merck Mercenaries, paving the way for new drug tests in Congo. The Coca-Cola Commandos, guarding the perimter of their rural Utah strongholds. Just watch, Benton. It's all happening.