Why Private Military Contractors Are A Good Thing
30th September 2007
Read it — if you dare.
The kind of conflicts we’re seeing and are likely to see are far more like crime, pervasive and opportunistic, than like conventional interstate warfare. The patriotic sentiments that motivated volunteer armies in the past are harder to apply to campaigns designed to strengthen vulnerable foreign states, or to limit the extent of bunkering and other criminal activities that have no obvious ideological valence. And so we will need to rely on skilled professionals to help police the world.
Indeed. What our culture faces today is the sort of thing that civilizations faced in times past — barbarians who do not share our values and are relics of an earlier and more primitive time, people who think it cooler to be pirates and slavers than to earn a living, people who don’t think twice about raping, torturing, pillaging, and murdering those to whom they’ve taken a dislike, etc. What we face is a pest control problem rather than a military problem. If you’ve got fire ants in your yard, you don’t declare war on them and call the Army; you call the appropriate professionals and get it taken care of.
Do read the comments and reflect on the fact that people that intellectually vacant have a vote that counts as much as yours.