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nerdgirl 0
QuoteIt's no different than contracting someone to work on your house or car?
For me, it is different. (See my comments throughout basically synopsized to force projection, etc. as a function that includes more than just cost/profit as the sole determining independent variable.)
While the EO/Sierra Leone case was an example, as I understand, of a private company employing a foreign national private company to engage in armed conflict, it wasn't an international conflict.
Again, my understanding is that the state failed to provide the security and law enforcement that was needed for a domestic business entity to function. (May have been a transnational company (?), which makes it even more complicated).
It's clearly a piece, but it's also substantively different, imo.
Is that (private armies) the solution for dealing with failing or failed states? (The "So What? Who Cares?" for me w/r/t failing/failed states isn't specifically humanitarian but in instability they create that affects US strategic interests, whether through offering safe haven to pirates or radical Islamist terrorists.)
QuoteDisclaimer... I have never hired a mercenary company.
Me neither.
Altho' when I was supposed to go to Iraq in 2004, the private military security contractors (not Blackwater) who were contracted did inadvertantly, I think, contribute to substantial/substantive changes that were made in the planning. It was something that I speculated about at the time ... and that I am reminded of by this conversation.
/Marg
Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying
So, I do agree that scahill believes in what he is doing, but i think it is just because he doesn't like blackwater because he hates war and profit from war. I think he is just trying to find as many rumors as he can and try to pass them off as fact to further his agenda/make money himself which ironically indirectly allows him to profit from war as well.
I still find it difficult to believe that Prince is a crusader. I think he is a devout christian that has expert knowledge of guerilla warfare. I do not see a connect between the two. I think that can be said about the majority of our men and women on the front lines- they have strong religious beliefs and are soldiers, but they arent crusaders.
I do not know much of CFI or FRC, but I don't see anything that links those to being a crusader. from what i found, SFI provides aid to persecuted churches around the world, and FRC looks like a christian lobbying group- pro life and such.
Personally I am an atheist, but I'm not against people having the right to believe in what they want. I think the whole Bush cr*p of talking to god and jesus was terrifying, i hate that about the right in general. I may never understand how someone can have those beliefs, but we do have freedom of religion in this country. I think the lefties and anti-war people are sensationalizing Prince's beliefs to further their own agendas.
Scahill is the tip of the spear for them, using whatever he possibly can to scare people into hating Xe and Prince. Prince, to me, is a Christian, a warrior, and a capitalist. Now I can see how one may try to connect all three in reverse order- a capitalist with the means to impose his beliefs around the world- but from what I have read he isn't that stupid and it wouldn't last if he, in fact, was that insane.
Xe is a scary organization because of the power they possess with so few people. When they make a mistake it is heard around the world, Prince is a smart guy, he knows mistakes are costly to his business. His business couldn't survive as a crusading organization. So, with what I have read, seen, and researched on Xe/blackwater and Prince- my conclusion is he is a businessman, the king of the dirty work that sometimes, has to be done. Lot's of people refuse to accept that last part and will do whatever they can to stop it.
Oh, I'm not offended by you agreeing that i have a moral flexibility, i said it ha ha ha! i think after some of my travels around the world i think i have a more realistic view of humanity, where one may try and be idealistic and sugar coat or find the good, i believe i see reality. some people need that hope, be it through religion/faith or some other form of coping mechanism when they see or experience bad things, I don't.
Making friends and playing nice since 1983
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