Posted on 09/25/2014 11:58:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
On his Fox News show Monday night, Bill O'Reilly suggested using mercenaries to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) instead of U.S. ground forces, which President Obama has repeatedly vowed not to deploy.
The use of mercenaries is as old as warfare itself. Alexander the Great used them. King George III hired German mercenaries to fight for the British in the American Revolution. Today mercenaries go by other names, like “contractor."
The president is to be commended for assembling a coalition that includes Arab states, but why are our European allies not part of it? Britain hasn't sent planes, though British citizens have been killed by jihadists. An ISIS splinter group in Algeria claims to be holding a French national hostage and vows to kill him unless France halts its attacks on ISIS positions in Iraq, but France isn't joining the president's coalition to hit ISIS targets in Syria.
Under O'Reilly's scenario, mercenaries would be well paid and live under American rules of war and the Geneva Convention. They would solve a political problem for President Obama and his liberal base that wishes not to be a part of any Mideast conflict and, more importantly, it might be more effective in achieving the president's goal of "degrading and destroying" ISIS far more than airstrikes alone.
Daniel Trombly and Yasir Abbas are analysts with Caerus Associates, a research and strategy firm based in Washington. In an article for The Daily Beast, they get to the heart of what's wrong with a bombing-only strategy:
"The more familiar but difficult medium- to long-term task of degrading ISIS's operational leaders and eventually its high leadership will take well-disciplined, organized ground forces to push out ISIS guerrillas entrenched among population centers where airpower cannot remove them. It also will take major improvements of the quality of intelligence, especially in Syria, where U.S. relationships are least developed and its forces are most unfamiliar with the local environment. Strategically, airpower will play a supporting role to efforts to organize and coordinate ISIS's rivals on the ground to retake territory permanently and contain it as a regional threat. Even as ISIS's rapid offensive gains have proved limited and vulnerable to modern air attack, the group's capabilities as a defensive and clandestine guerrilla force -- and its decentralized military structure -- will deny foreign airpower a rapid or comprehensive victory in the long-term effort for its defeat."
What's needed most is a change in American and Western thinking. This war against a constantly shifting force of what is, despite denials by the president and Secretary of State John Kerry, a religious-political virus, is likely to last years, perhaps decades.
When American leaders stop trying to turn the motivations of fanatics into something other than what they are, only then will we start treating this war for what it is. All of the non sequiturs about Islam being a "peaceful religion" that has been "hijacked" by extremists is meaningless if members of the "peaceful religion" don't rise up and defeat those fanatics they claim have misrepresented their faith.
Though Arab states joining the coalition is a start, the fact that these nations are not yet providing ground forces to defeat these "apostates" and "heretics" tells us something. Are they afraid of ISIS and other Islamist groups? Do they share some of their goals?
Either way, if Western civilization and its values of tolerance, freedom and religious pluralism are to survive, we have to make sure that ISIS does not. There can be no co-existence between good and evil. If good doesn't triumph, evil will.
Mercenaries might be an effective tool in defeating evil.
“but France isn’t joining the president’s coalition to hit ISIS targets in Syria.”
Umm, yeah, they are. These blabbers should at least know WTF they’re talking about before they write things. But it is disgraceful that the UK isn’t involved as well.
The Roman Empire collapse was partially due to it paying mercenaries to do their fighting for them. Nobody would know that because we don’t teach history anymore.
Don’t forget the ban on Writs of Marque, although that ban could be repealed by Congress.
For some reason, I think handing Churchill's bust in the Whitehouse back to the Prime Minister may have something to do with this. Margaret Thatcher's funeral also.
Sun Tzu was also no fan of mercenaries.
Wrong. French planes hit ISIS targets is Iraq not Syria
Someone from Blackwater was on Fox News yesterday morning and was talking about that
I didn’t watch FOX News or any other cable news and network news at all on Monday. I was instead watching movies on my Amazon FireTV. I couldn’t stop watching the BBC series Ballykissangel, but I did hear about O’Reilly’s suggestion on Fox and Friends yesterday morning
If an enterprising businessman were to form a mercenary group to kill ISIS/ISIL and the help the Iraqi, Syrian and other governments to get control of their nations, I am sure that they could ask for a cut of the oil revenue as payment...
Bad medicine for this problem.
Mercenaries have loyalty to one thing - money. A rich sheik who supports ISIS could offer more and turn the mercenaries against us. And if things got real hot, the mercenaries could pack and leave, like they did when Kaddhafi went on the run. His mercenaries skedaddled out of Libya real fast because they knew they would no longer be paid. They had no loyalty to Kaddhafi or his cause.
You don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
Eventually there would be one leader, I think I read that in an old book a long time ago.
Back in 2001/02 we should have used the Russians as mercs in Afghanistan. Told them to go in there, clear out the Taliban, and bring bin Laden’s head on a pike for $500 billion. Complete autonomy to complete the task. No media, and no questions asked. Get the job done, get the money. Stay if you want, or get out at your convenience.
So long they fight for free business and do not get a bailout, is fine with me. The welfarist mercenaries is who we got to worry about.
I think if we go and dig....there’s at least a dozen occasions that mercenaries were brought into a conflict, and it fouled things up rather than fix them.
Those Hessen guys that Washington led his guys against across the bay....weren’t they basically mercenaries?
I get what you’re saying but I don’t think so. This is not “America’s” war alone. British civilians were murdered too. If I were a Brit, this would not be the time to ignore Obama out of spite.
Highest bidders will will. If they fight for money. Money will make them turn on you. It is better with a man who take an oath.
So true!
Why send Americans to do a job, muslims will do for free?
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