I’m sad that NSFWCorp has gone down PandoDaily’s maw — guess the future of journalism is all glibertarian tech billionaires pissing on each others’ vanity media projects — but at least John Dolan/Gary Brecher/The War Nerd still has a paying gig:
… Militarism in American history is like undulant fever: It comes and goes in waves. There was a time in the 1970s when most people saw the Armed Services as a last-ditch job for the otherwise unemployable. That changed during the Reagan years. The change didn’t happen because the US military did much to cover itself with glory; Reagan’s administration was timid about direct military involvement, only willing to invade pushovers like Grenada and wisely reluctant to provide the Afghan “mujahideen” with advanced weapons. No, it was the fact that you stood very little chance of actually getting killed, combined with the shift to Reagan’s “service economy” that made the military look good. Compared to working at WalMart, the Army was a socialist paradise: lifetime medical care, free room and board, and all the education you could handle.
Once people saw the WTC in flames, soldier-worship ramped up to a frenzy. The United States has been involved in multiple wars for a decade, and surveys show that public approval ratings for the military top those for every other profession, including doctors and scientists.
Meanwhile, Libertarian ideology has been tracking enthusiasm for soldiering. By now, almost a quarter of all Americans lean libertarian. It’s a group that looks a lot like Erik Prince, 94% white, two-thirds male, and of what used to be called “military age.”…
… [But] the U.S. Armed Services are a government monopoly — the government monopoly, the one that underwrites and provides protection for all the others. When you have a monopoly on large-scale violence, you have a monopoly on anything you happen to want. The IRS, the pet hate of Libertarians, would be a harmless joke without the threat of military force backing up their collection letters.
So how do the young white males who share these two incompatible hobbies, militarism and libertarianism, square their circle? Well, that’s where Erik Prince comes in, with a simple solution: the glorification of the perfect combination of free-market independence and American militarism — the mercenary….
The more I looked at the history of mercenary captains like Prince, especially those from the era of the condottieri, the mercenary commanders who destroyed Italy in the late 15th and early 16th century, the more sense Prince’s indifference to American military success started to make. Prince is the direct descendant of the condottieri; even the word “condottiero” means “contractor,” Prince’s preferred term for his soldiers of fortune. Some of these condottieri particularly Francesco Bussone Carmagnola, are eerily similar to Prince, in their cynicism, in their career trajectory, their selfishness, and their megalomaniacal vanity. Carmagnola set the pattern for all condottieri: He would win a tactical victory, as he did in the Battle of Maclodio then allow the defeated army to retreat and regroup, ensuring more campaigning and “…forcing [his backers] to pay incredible amounts in upkeep for the almost useless army.” From 15th century Northern Italy to the Sunni Triangle isn’t all that far, when you think like a mercenary…
Open Thread: Eric Prince, Still A Terrible Excuse for a Human BeingPost + Comments (84)