U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster blocked Blackwater founder Erik Prince from debating the merits of his private security proposal at the recent high-level Afghanistan war strategy meeting at Camp David, the former Navy SEAL confirms to Breitbart News.
While McMaster and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis have been advocating for increasing the American military presence in Afghanistan, Prince has proposed using a private army of about 5,500 troops, backed by nearly 2,000 U.S. service members, to end the nearly 16-year-old war.
I like Prince and I think at some point Mercs have a role here, but it’s probably not in this phase. One of the main problems is appearances. Mercs have a bad reputation, some of it deserved, but not from Blackwater and the American mercs. If we are going to get cooperation from our allies, I don’t think we can sell them on having a small merc force in there rooting out terrorists. It’s a non starter to many of them.
We can’t solve the Afghani problem ourself. We need allies in this fight. Hopefully we can get more cooperation from Pakistan, but I’m going to wait and see on that. Having mercs in there, would not get what we want from them.