Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
There's an editorial in the NYT today decrying this trend, but I'm not seeing the downside in a concrete way. I guess mercenaries are less useful than regular troops in that you can't use them in some of the same ways -- e.g., in large formations when things really go to hell -- but it's unclear that this has really made much of a difference.
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I'm mildly uncomfortable with it, because (a) quality control is not very clear, (b) it permits us to evade responsibility in a way that we can't through the use of troops, and (c) our ability to rely on the protections offered to troops to protect mercs is also fuzzy.
It's not only unclear how the government is accountable if the mercs do something stupid (like shoot up Iraqi civilians or something similar), consider also the effects of having our mercs captured. Certainly it's a bit inapplicable in today's conflict, where insurgents won't really give a shit about treaty requirements for treatment of prisoners, but generally speaking, can we demand that captured mercs get equivalent treatment to those of troops? I don't know.
