(Update) Mercy(nary) Me!!
By Mona
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The milblogs are having fits about William Arkin’s piece in WaPo arguing that the American military is made up of “mercenaries.” A blogger at Daily Kos, former Captain Kevin O’Meara, has affirmed that characterization, which really honks off BlackFive, who apparently served with O’Meara and alleges:
I guess no one is allowed to disagree with Kevin or Monseignor Arkin? Seriously, because we’re not Kos-sacks we don’t get to have an opinion? Absolute moral authority must only belong to Cindy Sheehan and the far far left. Nice try on the marginalization, too.
BlackFive and other milbloggers should know that because they are a volunteer military, no less than General William Westmoreland (a “far leftist”?!) considered them precisely to be “mercenaries,” as became evident when, during his testimony before a Presidential Commission convened to consider abolition of the draft, Westmoreland argued against abolition with Milton Friedman:
“In the course of his [General Westmoreland's] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, ‘General, would you rather command an army of slaves?’ He drew himself up and said, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.’ I replied, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.’ But I went on to say, ‘If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.’ That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries.”
- Milton and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 380.
I can understand why the term annoys today’s military — it has a heavily pejorative connotation — but it simply is accurate. But do read the rest of the link to the Friedman tribute to understand why a “mercenary” armed services is simply not a bad thing.
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Update:
Andrew Olmsted misunderstands me:
But Mona, as is her wont, dips into the Argument from Authority to prove her point, noting that no less an authority than William Westmoreland thought of paid soldiers as mercenaries…
No, I was pointing out that when BlackFive hurls the ad hominem that only “far leftists” — someone like Cindy Sheehan –Â calls a volunteer army “mercenaries,” he is wrong. It is further my position that anyone who earns a living for whatever they do, however noble the calling, is a “mercenary.” And I emphatically do believe that being a member of the United States Armed Services is a noble calling.
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Further, I ardently oppose conscription, and have always felt the nation must instead craft competitive wage and benefit packages to maintain an excellent volunteer fighting force. One gets what one pays for, and that is as true with soldiers and sailors as any other profession. Not being a pacifist and recognizing the need to be able to defend our nation — as opposed to policing the globe and imposing “regime change” — I favor maintaining an armed services.
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Andrew insultingly suggests that my post indicates the beginning of demonizing the troops — nope, you won’t see me do that. No one saw me post about the crimes at Haditha as if they indict the entire U.S. military. For I understand that during war, in all times and places, some few behave like beasts even those hailing from the most civilized of nations.
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Most emphatically, I am not anti-troop. I merely object to arguments that if many troops dislike public opposition to the Iraq war and/or the “Surge,” they have no right to be free of that widespread sentiment. Proclaiming negative opinions about the Iraq war does not constitute failure to support the troops, nor an intention to wish them ill. We citizens pay their salaries and have a right to oppose a particular manner in which the troops have been deployed. Is that right not part of what they fight for?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
February 4, 2007 @ 9:25 pm
I miss the point of this post entirely – is it that if you split hairs enough, something that’s clearly meant to be a pejorative remark isn’t to be taken as such?
Comment by sean —
February 4, 2007 @ 9:59 pm
The term “mercenary” is generally used for soldiers who fight for a country other than their own primarily for money. We don’t refer to the Lincoln Brigade as “mercenaries,” because their primary motivation wasn’t money. Nor is the term appropriate for the current members of the U.S. armed forces. Armies of the kind we have now are commonly referred to “volunteer.” For example, my Civil War ancestors fought in, for example, the “56th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.” However, if you want to restrict the term “volunteer” to people who work without compensation, then “professionals” would be the appropriate term to distinguish the kind of army that we have now from the conscript kind that we had, most of the time, from WWI through Vietnam. That is the term commonly used for the British armies of the 19th century.
I thought libertarians liked the current kind of army, but the people here are a VERY strange brand of libertarians.
Comment by Mona —
February 4, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
There is nothing wrong with being a “mercenary.” Everyone must earn a living, and the United States absolutely should offer excellent compensation packages to its military employees. Perhaps as important if not more so, those injured in the performance of their duties should have top tier medical care and disability benefits. Libertarians are not usually known for advocating government spending, but most of us to endorse maintaining a military. Those soldiers and sailors should be voluntary, but they should be paid competitively, and taken care of if they come to harm.
In my strong opinion, the answer to “accusations” that they are mercenaries should be: Yeah, and?
(Sean is correct that mercenary soldiers have typically been taken to be those who will fight for any side or any cause if the price is right. But it need not mean that, and I don’t think Arkin or the Kos diarist intended it to be insulting, tho Westmoreland certainly did — as if opting for a career in the armed services is somehow ignoble.)
Comment by Thoreau —
February 4, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
The word “mercenary” can be used in more than one way. If used to mean “loyal only to money” then our military is not mercenary. If “mercenary” means “receiving a paycheck for what they do” then Mona’s “yeah, and?” response is appropriate.
Given that the word “mercenary” generally has negative connotations, I’d say that it’s better to only use it for the first meaning listed above, and describe our military as “professional”, as Mona suggests.
Comment by Michael Hall —
February 4, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
“Sean is correct that mercenary soldiers have typically been taken to be those who will fight for any side or any cause if the price is right. But it need not mean that …”
I edited a book on mercenaries.
“It need not mean that” is like saying “submarine need not mean a boat that goes underwater.” I mean … yeah … nothing about the word is platonic in its formal purity, and we could easily assign a different meaning to any arbitrary collection of sounds, but we don’t do that because then we can’t have blogs and comments and the balloons in comic books.
Sean nailed the defining characteristic: They don’t owe their first allegiance to a state. Maybe you don’t like states and so don’t like the distinction or think it’s useful, but that’s the distinction.
Westmoreland was using a cheap trick to prejudice his audience, so I can hardly blame Friedman for sliding in the shiv, but it was a stupid trick and it kind of endumbened any response that played along with its faulty premise.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
February 4, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
Excuse me? After Arkin goes on about “obscenely” pampered soldiers and sketches out a fantasy where troops who are still for the war assist in a coup to install a military government, he calls soldiers willing to express their frustration with opposition to the war
Mona, there’s no plausible way to read that but as using mercenary as a pejorative and as deliberately insulting.
I’m going to bow out of this discussion, though. To put it crudely, I’ll grant there are probably hordes of hawks out there pissing in just the same way Arkin is – but you’re telling me it’s raining.
Comment by Mona —
February 4, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
Eric, Arkin is clearly frustrated at the media’s trotting out some cherry-picked soldiers who play into the right-wing noise machine’s refrain that if we don’t support the war, we by definition do not support the troops. So, he is hammering on the theme that these soldiers are paid and they volunteered, and have no right to demand that their fellow citizens shut up and refrain from trying to end a mission that the electorate deems misguided if not disastrous.
Canonizing the troops as saints is an impediment (or sought to be made into one by many on the right) to open and robust debate on Iraq. The profession of soldier is noble (as is that of the well-paid emergency room physician), but it is also a job they volunteered for and does not carry with it a right to shut up the citizenry.
But I don’t think Arkin is trying to insult the troops, but rather is demanding that they stop being used to silence war critics. They chose a profession that is paid for by taxpayers who also get to decide whether and when to use them.
Comment by abb1 —
February 5, 2007 @ 6:18 am
The profession of soldier is not at all as noble as is that of the well-paid emergency room physician. Physicians save lives, soldiers kill.
The point of using mercenaries/ professional soldiers is that they can be sent pretty much anywhere to kill pretty much anybody – where the draftees (not really being slaves) are most likely to refuse. As it happened during the Vietnam war.
Works well for Switzerland.
Comment by abb1 —
February 5, 2007 @ 6:39 am
Also, what about this: draftees are forced to slavery while the volunteers sell themselves to slavery – they can’t quit tomorrow and move on like professors of economics, can they? Sorry, but it was rather disingenuous of Mr. Friedman to imply that.
And if you do feel that being a soldier is similar to being a slave (and I certainly agree), think about this: what kind of person would choose to become a killer slave in exchange for room, board and a couple of thousand a month?
Trackback by Andrew Olmsted dot com —
February 5, 2007 @ 9:45 am
Twain Was Right…
I said that we were going to see soldiers start to get demonized more as opposition to the war gets more heated, and I stand by that. Today’s example: Mona, who has been posting a Unqualified Offerings of late. She……
Comment by Sven —
February 5, 2007 @ 10:24 am
It’s apparent Arkin’s post was an emotional reaction to the obnoxious NBC video. Not only is the mercenary crack needlessly incendiary, it’s not even consistent with the rest of his argument. If soldiers consider themselves the sole arbiters of what’s best for the country, then their motives can hardly be considered mercenary.
Considering his subsequent posts, it looks like he was shooting for an Andrew Bacevich-type thesis on the cleft between the public and the military. But he fell far short.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:12 am
A few notes, if I may.
1) My post was a follow-up to an earlier post of mine, where I noted Arkin’s piece as a marker for what I anticipate will be a growing use of demonization of the military by many opposed to the war. Your piece was noted as another example.
2) I have yet to argue that people don’t have the right to make whatever arguments they choose, to include demonizing the military if that’s their desire.
3) As I noted in my post, there is a legal definition of mercenary in the Geneva Conventions. The fact you happen to define mercenary differently than common usage doesn’t change how people view the term. Maybe when I say someone’s a skunk, I’m referring to their generally pleasant temperament rather than insulting them, but when I use the term I shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t take it as intended.
4) I take you at your word that you’re not anti-troops. The point of my post stands, however: as emotions heat up over the war the longer it goes, the more we’re going to see things like attacks on the troops. Your post may not have been intended as such, and you’ve certainly every right to write whatever you think or feel, but I still see it as a valuable addition for those looking to tear down the troops regardless of your intent.
5) I do apologize for insulting you, and have updated my post to try and clarify my dispute with your post as opposed to your person.
Comment by BruceR —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Funny. At first the fuss was about calling the bonafide mercs with Blackwater, etc. what they were — they had to be called “contractors,” which of course managed to completely elide the significant differences between them and all the other kinds of contractors in Iraq.
Now Mona wants to elide the clear and obvious differences between professional soldiers and mercs because… well, I’m not really sure why, either, other than to give William Arkin some kind of a blog-hug.
Precision in language stymies the enemies of reason. It was much better when soldiers were soldiers, and mercs, mercs.
BTW, the other significant difference between the conventional definition of a merc and a soldier is that a merc lies outside the traditional mechanisms of military discipline of the country they serve (the reason why Gurkhas, Legionnaires, and the Black Watch aren’t normally classified as mercs.) If you can still be legally strung up for desertion, you’re not a merc.
It follows that for one to be a mercenary doctor, one would have to be operating for pay, outside the authority of the relevant medical regulatory bodies.
Comment by Mona —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:40 am
Soldiers sign up for the armed services many times for MONEY. For the educational and other benefits. They often may also be true blue patriots, but only the hopelessly naive would think we could sustain our excellent armed services without offering decent pay and perks. So, Arkin gets snarky in doing the “oops, volunteers” thing because while the troops volunteer for their jobs, they are compensated. They are “volunteers” the same way any of us are if we chose profession A over profession B. The troops are not candy-stripers, they get paid.
Arkin would have been better to avoid the word “mercenary” unless he was making clear that he means it as I do — we are all mercenaries if we get paid for what we do. And a volunteer military, attracted in part by the compensation package, is a very, very good idea. You wouldn’t get genius neurosurgeons if the profession paid custodial wages, and the same holds true for soldiers and sailors.
But by the same token, the military should not be elevated to such a saintly status that disagreeing with their predominant view is somehow unpatriotic or anti-troop. They are doing a dangerous job, but it is a job, and one they chose and for which we all pay their salaries. We have no obligation to refrain from criticizing the missions they are assigned to.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:52 am
We have no obligation to refrain from criticizing the missions they are assigned to.
Who’s arguing otherwise? Not me. Not Blackfive. Not the soldiers that got Arkin so worked up.
Comment by sean —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:58 am
If I understand Mona correctly, she, as a libertarian, favors a volunteer (or professional) army over a conscript army, and she manifests this preference by using derogatory terms for the members of the volunteer army. This behavior might explain why libertarianism as a political movement never seems to do very well.
Comment by KCinDC —
February 5, 2007 @ 12:34 pm
It seems odd to use “mercenary” to mean “professional” and then be surprised when people take offense at your Humpty Dumptyism. When normal people use “mercenary” it implies that those described are motivated only, or at least mostly, by money, not simply that they are paid.
Comment by BruceR —
February 5, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
So, in other words, we are all of us civilians mercenaries, and yet we are all of us volunteers, too. (Except for the real mercs, I suppose we’re still calling them “contractors.”) Great thing, that precision of language.
Apparently, if anyone decides to define a word, stripped of centuries of lexicography and context, in whatever way they want to, that’s okay — in fact that novel usage is, to quote the original post, “simply accurate.”
But I do find it highly amusing to juxtapose this post with previous of Jim’s efforts on the requirement, for instance, to precisely define our terminology with regard to “WMD.” Imprecision used to be this blog’s enemy.
I don’t think you should refrain from criticizing soldiers’ missions because soldiering might be a noble profession, Mona. I think you should refrain because you self-evidently don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.
Comment by Michael Hall —
February 5, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
Libertarians don’t have a monopoly on this behavior. Reds are awesome at it, too. Just fling the phrases “state capitalist” and “deformed worker state” among a bunch of ortho-trots and watch ‘em go at it.
They know they’re using language the others don’t agree with, and they know their choice of words will both inflame the opposition and rally their comrades, and they know that to someone with no investment at all in the debate, the argument will seem impossibly, hair-splittingly fine. That’s what gets them off.
Mona says:
I’m just repeating myself here, but when you use the word mercenary as you do, you’re hopelessly diluting a meaning that, as a previous commenter noted, has specific definitions among people who expect to participate in serious conversations about mercenaries (like the Geneva signatories, for starters).
What’s really frustrating is that it doesn’t even really seem to be the point of either the column or the post, which raise much more useful points about the relationship the troops have to civilian opinion.
I served as a paratrooper for four years, and I’m a lot more concerned about intolerance of civilian dissent within the military and its attendant civilian fetishizing of soldiers than I am about some dead economist’s rhetorical hair-splitting with some dead general.
It bums me out that the columnist had to throw that bomb in there at the end, and it bums me out that this is what the conversation is about here.
Comment by Mona —
February 5, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
Alright, first, I never said I equate “professional” with mercenary — Sean said I should prefer “profesional,” and then Thoreau seems to have assumed I had, and then more of you went to the races over something I never said. What I do believe is that everyone who receives payment for their labor is a mercenary, including soldiers and sailors. I’ve always believed that, and when, for example, I have practiced law I would describe myself as an “intellectual whore,” meaning, I’d argue just about anything for anyone if the retainer was paid.
I was a mercenary in the halls of justice, even if, as is true, I also hold to some romantic notions about the role of lawyers in upholding truth, justice and the American way.
General Westmoreland said a volunteer army — one attracted in part by wages and benefits as opposed to being coerced — was a mercenary force. For the same reason he found that so awful, I think it is entirely proper and unobjectionable. Soldiering is noble, but it is also a job.
And regardless of what Andrew or BlackFive have or have not said, the notion that it is wrong to criticize the job to which troops are currently assigned, or an evil thing to do to the troops, can be found all kinds of places. People have been arguing it with McQ at QandO for a long time now, as but one example. That was obviously the nettle under Arkin’s saddle, and I can relate to his pique. Our military deserves our respect as an institution, but they are not saints and should not be elevated to some sacred status that renders criticism of everything they do, or everything they are ordered to do, “unpatriotic.” They put their pants on one leg at a time, and chose their job, just like the rest of us. I am grateful there are those who are willing to opt for such dangerous work, but that is their choice, and my gratitude does not entail making holy icons of them.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
February 5, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
So…maybe you should take on that argument, instead of offering your explanation of why mercenary doesn’t really mean what people think it means. Just a thought.
Comment by BruceR —
February 5, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
“General Westmoreland said…”
Your quote is of Westmoreland’s rhetorical and inexact use of a word, and how he was immediately shot down by an intelligent listener. You then perversely use that interchange to defend your own rhetorical and inexact use of the same word again. That’s just bizarre: it’s fair to conclude from their own words, above, that neither Westmoreland nor Friedman would have agreed with your current, entirely idiosyncratic, definition of the word.
Friedman said, at a nub, “if professional soldiers are mercenaries, then we all of us are mercenaries.”
It’s not that you have a problem with understanding the military, so much. It’s that you appear to have a problem with understanding the debater’s use in an argument of the if-then construct.
Comment by Mona —
February 5, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
First, and contrary to BlackFive, Westmoreland isn’t a left-winger or akin to Cindy Sheehan — so obviously non-leftists can and do use the term “mercenary” about the volitional armed services. Westmoreland had a reason for his “rhetoric.” Just as Arkin and the Kos diarist do for their same rhetoric.
Friedman is right — if a volunteer force is “mercenary,” then so are our butchers, our lawyers, our university professors & etc. Westmoreland seemed to think there was something ignoble, unromantic and just venal about luring soldiers with an attractive compensation package. Bullshit. It is the right way to go.
But that also means it is not wrong or inaccurate to point out that the troops get paid for the job they have chosen. That may be less heroic sounding, and less amenable to unassailable lionizing that would suggest it is horrific to question any mission they are charged with, but reality is often not all that romantic. Which is what Westmoreland’s real problem was. But it isn’t a problem for me.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
February 5, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
You are aware that soldiers have received compensation for their service since the founding of the republic, right? Were they all mercenaries, according to your idiosyncratic definition?
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
February 5, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
I should probably also note that Westmoreland isn’t exactly a great example of a right winger, given that he’s been dead for quite a few years now.
Comment by Mona —
February 5, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
First, and contrary to BlackFive, Westmoreland isn’t a left-winger or akin to Cindy Sheehan — so obviously non-leftists can and do use the term “mercenary” about the volitional armed services. Westmoreland had a reason for his “rhetoric.” Just as Arkin and the Kos diarist do for their same rhetoric.
Friedman is right — if a volunteer force is “mercenary,” then so are our butchers, our lawyers, our university professors & etc. Westmoreland seemed to think there was something ignoble, unromantic and just venal about luring soldiers with an attractive compensation package. Bullshit. It is the right way to go.
But that also means it is not wrong or inaccurate to point out that the troops get paid for the job they have chosen. That may be less heroic sounding, and less amenable to unassailable lionizing that would suggest it is horrific to question any mission they are charged with, but reality is often not all that romantic. Which is what Westmoreland’s real problem was. But it isn’t a problem for me.
And Andrew, whenever Westmoreland died, and however one characterizes his political views, “left-wing” and similar to Cindy Sheehan’s ain’t included.
Comment by Nell —
February 5, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
Bless you, BruceR. It’s extremely misleading to refer to private military with the simple term ‘contractor’, which should apply only to unarmed, truly civilian contractors.
Many news stories referred to the Blackwater helicopter that was shot down recently as ‘civilian’, despite its being armed and part of a security convoy protecting State Dept. personnel.
Comment by Nell —
February 5, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
The fact that there are close to 50,000 private military operatives in Iraq makes what to call them a non-trivial issue. If we’re not allowed to call them mercenaries, I damned well don’t want soldiers and Marines being called that.
Arkin’s point could and should have been made without the pejorative term, and the word Friedman and he should have reached for (and the one that Miz Westmoreland’s boy was strenuously seeking to avoid) was professional, as several others have said.
Comment by Azael —
February 5, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
I’m curious, Mona, why you didn’t follow up with Arkin’s column where he talks about the response he’s received from the military community to this column. It’s a rather interesting rejoinder to Olmstead’s dreary prediction of the demonizing of the military.
Comment by Gary Farber —
February 5, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
“Many news stories referred to the Blackwater helicopter that was shot down recently as ‘civilian’, despite its being armed”
Could you give your cite on that, please? After the discussion at ObWi, I looked into this with some attention, and have continued to do so, and I wrote there, I’ve yet to run into any clear word on whether the MD 530F was armed, or not. I speculated that it might have been, from the phrasing of one news article that ambiguously said it “came to the aid” of ground forces in trouble, but nothing that remotely confirmed anything about the helicopter being armed. Thus my interest in knowing your source on that.
Comment by Azael —
February 5, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
And there’s also another column by Arkin where he talks about his use of the term under discussion. As always, it’s also entertaining to read the comments to his columns – very enlightening…
Comment by Wild Pegasus —
February 5, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
as emotions heat up over the war the longer it goes, the more we’re going to see things like attacks on the troops.
Indeed, and it’s high time that they be attacked. Standing armies are the bane of liberty, as basically every single Founding Father knew. However supposedly patriotic their intentions may be, their willingness to serve in a standing army, and to kill and destroy on the order of the state, is a grave threat to the liberty of citizen and non-citizen alike.
I would settle for a country where joining the military was seen as a good way to end up crippled, but I would rather have a country where joining the military was seen as equivalent to performing mob hits.
- Josh
Comment by Jim Henley —
February 5, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
Mona, like others, I’m bewildered by your point here. As libertarians, we should always be quick with the institutional analysis. When I read that General Westmoreland once complained that a volunteer military would be a bunch of “mercenaries,” I immediately suspect that Westmoreland was reaching for a pejorative to ward off a change that threatens the power and status of his bureaucratic class and station. (That he turned out to be wrong – going to voluntary service raised the status of the professional military to unprecedented heights – is what you would expect from America’s worst-ever general.) And since Westmoreland clearly meant the term pejoratively, he makes a poor counter to a dispute that, at bottom, is whether Arkin meant the term pejoratively.
Now I completely believe that, as a libertarian, you attach no negative connotation to the term “mercenary.” And if William Arkin is a libertarian, that’s a highly relevant point.
But I don’t think he is.
Comment by Nell —
February 5, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
Gary, I have no official cite for the Blackwater copter itself being armed, but if the craft had not been fitted out with machine guns, the men riding in the back were assuredly wielding them. My source is commenter Greg London in a recent thread at Making Light that turned into quite the milgeekfest:
Given the nature of the work being performed by Blackwater, I have trouble with the vehicle being termed a ‘civilian helicopter’, whether it had been fitted out with weapons or not.
Comment by Nell —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
Gary, I have no source that is specific on whether the Blackwater helicopter itself was armed or not. But I’m very, very sure that the men it was carrying were heavily armed. So let me rephrase: it is seriously misleading, given the work that Blackwater is doing in Iraq, to refer to their vehicle as a ‘civilian helicopter’.
Commenter Greg London in a recent thread at Making Light (which became quite a milgeekfest) described how light helicopters function in an escort role. He was mistaken about the exact model shot down, but the one he’s talking about is an earlier and closely related version:
Comment by Happy Jack —
February 5, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
Could you give your cite on that, please?
Gary – I think people are referring to this.
Comment by abb1 —
February 6, 2007 @ 3:33 am
@23: Westmoreland seemed to think there was something ignoble, unromantic and just venal about luring soldiers with an attractive compensation package.
I can’t speak for Westmoreland, but one could argue that soldiers – people with license to kill – better be motivated by something other than attractive compensation package.
If you happen to believe that war is the last resort, then this is not a matter of being noble and romantic, it’s a purely pragmatic argument.
You keep insisting that soldier is just another vocation, like butcher or lawyer. Sorry, but this is not at all self-evident; most people would probably disagree.
Comment by ajay —
February 6, 2007 @ 6:53 am
BruceR: “…the reason why Gurkhas, Legionnaires, and the Black Watch aren’t normally classified as mercs.”
BruceR: the Black Watch was a perfectly normal regular regiment of infantry in the British Army (now part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland). It’s got a few non-British soldiers (Fijians, mostly), but no more than any other unit. I think you may be misinformed.
Comment by Jim Henley —
February 6, 2007 @ 10:00 am
Nonsense: The Black Watch stands at the Wall, safeguarding the Seven Kingdoms from the hordes of wildlings and Others in icy northern Westeros.
Comment by BruceR —
February 6, 2007 @ 10:09 am
Mona, you keep digging yourself deeper here. You do realize William Westmoreland was a career soldier, right (not a draftee, either, btw)? Do you believe he thought of himself as a mercenary? If not, why on earth do you think he’d be supportive of you and Arkin in this circumstance?
Ajay, my reference to the Black Watch relates to the use of Scottish soldiers in English service abroad more generally. It’s fair to say the Scots fighting in North America in the Seven Years War or Revolution were hardly advancing Scottish national interests in the process.
The general point is that by international custom, armies are allowed to hire and pay non-citizen soldiers, without them being automatically condemned as mercenaries, providing those soldiers are subject to the same codes of discipline as citizen soldiers would be.
Comment by Mona —
February 6, 2007 @ 10:23 am
Comment by BruceR —
February 6, 2007 @ 10:25 am
Andrew: Actually, I believe the poster’s continued position that all soldiers since the beginning of non-barter economics are mercenaries (but also volunteers), so you and I both are, but that all paid civilian workers are, as well. But so is my mother, what with that church secretary job she has and all. My dad’s retired from his chemistry research, so I guess he’s a former merc. Their free subscriptions to Soldier of Fortune are no doubt coming any day now.
Paper boy? Merc. Homeless man I gave money to this morning? Merc.
In other news, I heard today that slavery is going to be officially redefined as “freedom,” and ignorance as “strength.”
Comment by Mona —
February 6, 2007 @ 10:52 am
Just as a point of information, a reporter for Asian Times describes Blackwater and other “private military companies” in Iraq and elsewhere as Corporate Mercenaries. The same reporter had previously in a book review titled The secret world of corporate mercenaries, explored that theme when reviewing Peter Singer’s (of the Brookings Institution) book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.
Comment by Gary Farber —
February 6, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
“And there’s also another column by Arkin where he talks about his use of the term under discussion. As always, it’s also entertaining to read the comments to his columns – very enlightening…”
They’re not columns; they’re posts on his blog. Huge difference.
Nell, thanks for responding. Although all you had was speculation, Happy Jack’s link/cite in #36 seems pretty reliable, so I think that’s sufficient basis to not quibble about the MD 530F’s mountings, and call them “armed” when they’re working with door gunners. Thanks muchly to Happy Jack for that cite, which I’d not seen before, and has vastly more detail on that incident than any other account I’d yet seen.
As a general comment, I’m coming to the conclusion that Mona is not, perhaps, the most sensitive person to the effects of her prose style and word choices that I’ve ever accounted (though certainly not the worst, either). Bulls and china shops occur to me.
I think Arkin both also used poor choices of language, and stuck his foot in his mouth, while otherwise largely having a perfectly reasonable basic point (it’s not the place of soldiers to instruct civilians on their patriotic need to support any given war as wise, or that failure to approve of a given war is unpatriotic and not supporting the troops), and being demonized by rightwingers who are largely mischaracterizing him, because they have a demons-of-the-week system. Beyond that, I really hope Mona doesn’t ever choose to defend me in the manner in which she’s “defending” Arkin. Helping him, she’s not.
This also strikes me as a rhetorically-challenged style far more reminiscent of the sort of off-putting approach some people think of when they think of “libertarians” they’ve encountered, rather than that of sensible libertarians without these traits, such as Jim, or Walter in Denver, or some others, I’m afraid.
Comment by MQ —
February 6, 2007 @ 7:39 pm
Mona, you should back off and apologize. Mercenary is a term with a plain meaning, and it is a pejorative term. (Note that the adjective mercenary is insulting). Mercenaries are not any soldiers who are paid for their service, but soldiers who serve *only for money*. The term mercenary is typically used for soldiers paid to serve in the army of a country that is not their native country.
Not only is it plain as day that our soldiers are not mercenaries, but it is critical that the distinction be clear. Once soldiers are mercenaries, they can, for example, be paid to disregard the U.S. constitution. As professional soldiers, they are sworn to defend it. The Roman republic was lost when its national soldiers became mercenaries.
You shouldn’t drag some harebrained liberatarian contention that money or selfishness can never be corrupting into this debate. The security of a republic is completely dependent on its military not being mercenaries.
Comment by sean —
February 6, 2007 @ 7:50 pm
I also don’t understand the point that libertarians think being a mercenary is fine. It isn’t part of libertarianism as I understand that doing things solely for money is always good or is the only good. Libertarians may believe that prostitution should not be illegal, but that doesn’t mean that they want their daughters to grow up to be prostitutes or that they don’t consider calling someone a whore to be an insult.
Likewise, many libertarians believe that collective forcible self-defense can be justified, but that hardly justifies killing people solely for money. In short, being a soldier is defensible on some sets of libertarian principles, but I don’t see how being a mercenary could be. (Although maybe being a mercenary for a private company, not a government, is okay for a libertarian? I leave that to some deeper thinkers.)
Comment by Mona —
February 6, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
Did you read my post, wherein in I said I could understand why the milbloggers are annoyed with Arkin’s use of the term given that, as I clearly stated, it carries heavily pejorative connotations? Nevertheless, I don’t imagine that Gen. Westmoreland intended to impugn all volitional members of the U.S. armed services or to say that lack of a draft would lead soldiers “to disregard the U.S. constitution”; what he intended to convey is that it is impure to have a military that has to extensively rely in a decent compensation package. I agree with the way he used the word — what he meant to suggest by its use — but I disagree that what he found awful is awful. It is a good idea.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
February 7, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
Oh, good grief. I find myself coming back to this.
As has been repeatedly explained, the usage of the term to apply to members of the US military is inaccurate, period.
No, Westmoreland was touchy about the draft and was using a cheap rhetorical device to counter criticism of it. Friedman did not defend mercenaries, but mocked Westmoreland’s misuse of the word “mercenary”, as has been explained.
The hilarious thing is that the original post is rather forgettable. So, some guy against the war progressed from “You’re for the war and not in the military? STFU, chickenhawk!” to “You’re for the war and in the military in Iraq? STFU, um…mercenary!” Big deal. The silliness around the post has been keeping it alive.