As far as the whole mercenary discussion, companies like Blackwater aren’t technically mercenaries, in the sense of how they are defined in international rules of warefare and conduct treaties. They’re essentially a new classification that the international community has yet to come to grips with, legally. In one sense they seem to fall on the mercenary side in that they are fighting a war for profit, but since they are a legal company with contracts to participate in conflicts in specific ways, they don’t fit into the Geneva Convention’s view of a mercenary.

This is one of many difficult issues that has arisen from the war on terror, and highlights some of the shortsightedness of the existing conventions.

I don’t know enough to know what actions such groups have carried out in places like Iraq and many others, but I imagine the good they might accomplish gets little to no notice. That said, their downside may far outweigh the positive. I’m not well read enough to know.

There are other books also that have researched the roles played by the privately contracted militias like Blackwater in our latest catastrophes, as well as the mercenaries in Africa, as well as other parts of the globe. The future implications from their behavior in New Orleans post-Katrina was frightening.

Not to mention the private militias on the other side(s).

History has taught us many lessons about mercenaries.

Well, not really. Miltary contractors aren’t “private mercenary armies”, they’re people who are hired to do a specific job that a government needs done and that it cannot do out of its own resources. And the reason for that is that modern warfare is a complex and highly skilled business, and the people who are best at it aren’t paid shit — so they quit and go where they’ll be fairly compensated. When you consider the the worst military atrocities in history were committed by “official government forces”, not “private mercenary armies” (especially “create wars where there are none”), you might possibly consider that a lot of what you know ain’t so.

When you get to Yale, be sure to visit the Durfee Sweet Shop. It’s conveniently located on the Old Campus, and any student can tell you where it is.