Great Merc movie.
Posted on 09/23/2014 3:43:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Seems far-fetched. We’re going to recruit and vet thousands of possibly unreliable foreigners, arm them to the teeth, shower them with cash, give them some perfunctory training, then send them into battle against the world’s nastiest jihadi degenerates, from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Hezbollah? Why, that’s … exactly what Obama’s planning to do with Syria’s “moderates.” Right? One of O’Reilly’s guests last night called his mercenary plan “morally corrosive” because it would outsource the national security of the United States to foreign actors, which … we’re right now in the process of doing. Who would you rather take your natsec chances with? A multinational mercenary force of experienced Blackwater-types who share no interests with ISIS, or a group of Sunnis from Syria who are more interested in attacking Assad and might be A-OK with the thought of Wahhabis ruling Damascus when push comes to shove?
The UN prohibits the raising of mercenary armies but the U.S. didn’t ratify the treaty that established that rule, so hey. (On the contrary, Article I of the Constitution empowers Congress to issue “letters of marque,” as any Ron Paul fan will happily remind you.) The flaw in O’Reilly’s theory isn’t that it’s “morally corrosive” to send trained soldiers-for-hire to do the heavy lifting against ISIS that our incompetent and cowardly Sunni allies in the region should be doing for themselves. The flaw is that there’s no obvious next step if the mercenaries succeed in routing ISIS from Raqqa and eastern Syria. Who takes over and rules that half of the country if that happens?
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Well, if you wanted to just stamp your feet and have an army pop up, its not all that hard.
If the US were to announce that they were recruiting an Army corps of Filipinos you would have half the Philippine military (and mostly the best half) in line to volunteer. You could put together a couple of very decent light infantry divisions in a few weeks, out of the manpower of the Philippine equivalent of 10-12 (understrength) divisions. It would be useful to have a single nation and military as the source, as they will be from a single culture and will already have been trained in a compatible system, whatever its faults.
The Philippine government may not be too happy though. I guess if you went gradually and traded the men for military aid.
If you wanted a real Foreign Legion there are far more than 25K trained experienced soldiers from respectable militaries available around the world.
The source of direction and authority is the real killer here as you say.
Or Shiite allies, same problem, incompetent and cowardly applies across the religious barriers.
Which brings us back to the beginning since it wouldn't be a mercenary army, it would be an American force, regardless of it's name.
why do we need 25,000 external soldiers to be sent in there? Syria and Iraq are sovereign countries - like it or not. They have their own soldiers - there - on the ground. We do need intelligence on the ground to direct our missiles but that’s about it besides some damn expensive missiles.
Let the coolies on the ground do the dirty work and get them to finance these cruise missiles with their oil money while they are at it.
O’Reilly has put forth a great, do-able solution.
Didn’t look closely enough. I thought your post was addressed to me because it pertained to French Foreign Legion which I had mentioned.
Cheaper yet, out a $1000 bounty on each head beheaded from ISIS members. You could knock off all of them, using their tactics (something they could understand) and fund it for $31,000,000 cheap by war standards.
The trouble is that the coolies on the ground are incompetent.
Iraq apparently has the officers to put together maybe a single brigade of reasonably effective Shiite troops. These seem to be occupied on the Tikrit front. The rest are only good enough to be massacred as we saw recently near Fallujah.
They would be mercenaries as much as the FFL is.
And of course lets not kid ourselves. It will have to be a US operation in fact if not in name.
The French Legionaries and Gurkhas and Spanish Legionnaires are not mercenaries.
With maybe one accidentally veering off course and landing on a certain city in Saudi Arabia :)
Yes they are, or at any rate the foreigners in them are.
Just as much as the Swiss, Irish and German regiments of the 18th century French army, or Frederick the Greats’ Freikorps “blue on blue and damned to hell”.
You mean like a crusade?
Perfect!
Because.... Oh, how many men did Caesar cross the Rubicon with again? I can’t remember.
Because of stuff like that, Bill. You short-sighted....
No, they are not mercenaries, they are there to serve the nation’s government, they are not free lancers working for whoever pays them.
For instance, in France it is illegal to be a mercenary, but not illegal to volunteer to serve in a foreign army.
I have an application from the Legion that I decided I would not use because of the five year minimum, and I have received offers to do mercenary work, and have sought mercenary work, I never saw them as the same thing.
Seems a rather thin distinction.
Plenty of people who have served in the Legion have seen and described themselves as mercenaries.
And the same Gurkhas who serve the British probably would have turned around and served the Indians or whoever else (Singapore, etc.) was recruiting, had they not made the cut for the British service.
It is a real distinction, and a legal one, and few mercenaries become members of the Legion, mercenaries come out of armies, they don’t go into armies, speaking in terms of the traditional white, or Western mercenaries.
In Africa during the 70s and 80s, you could find work as a mercenary, or you could join the Rhodesian or South African army, two different things.
Every cruise missile launched has the capacity.
Turn on a few light in the night sky and those not vaporized will be glowing targets for Puff the Magic dragon.
Great Merc movie.
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