Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military

[mother earth]

Vice takes an unprecedented look into the shadowy industry of Private Military Companies. For the past two decades these private companies, like Black Water, Aegis and G4S have silently consumed military operations around the world, doing everything from back end logistics, protection of government VIP's and diplomats to actual combat duties. In this documentary we explore the origins of this industry, their rise in the war on terror and their future operations around the world.

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Something to consider as POTUS plans to go to Congress to request wartime powers that do not limit turf to fight IS-IL.
Who is the enemy?

These private mercenaries are about profit with no allegiance to country. Who are they accountable to?

[zeemike]

1. Rome had private armies too.

And then Cesar realized he had the power and crossed the Rubicon.

It is not that straightforward today, our takeover by military forces will be slow, steady and silent...and we are unlikely to know when the Rubicon is crossed.

[mother earth]

2. I think we know we have reached a point where we need a return to accountability, in all areas.

That is the core issue in all that's gone wrong.

Privatizing profit and socializing risk is fundamentally what is wrong if we talk about income inequality, privatized military or corporate welfare,etc. Relying on a privatized mercenary force can only bring us more war and terrorism, the profit motive trumps all. Who is the enemy?

[zeemike]

4. In our capitalist model all industry must grow.

Growth is how the investor class make their money..if an industry grows so does it's stock value.
And once it becomes big enough it dominates government and uses it's influence to grow even bigger.
And all growth that do that on a body are called cancer...and so to borrow a phrase from Watergate era, I would say there is a cancer growing on our nation...and it wants to consume it all.
And once they own it all what do we call it?

[yuiyoshida]

3. What scares me is that they could

be used here in our own backyard.. and take out Elected government officials.. or work for a corporation here against the wishes of the US government, State government. They may not even care about the US Constitution.

[TxVietVet]

5. I believe that day is coming.

The private militias/mercenaries are only loyal to the highest bidder.

[Depaysement]

6. Coming soon

Confrontation with the U.S. military, if it hasn't happened already.

[DeSwiss]

7. K&R

- History only repeats itself when it's forgotten......

K&R

Rome's Barbarian Mercenaries
By David G. Frye

For Sidonius Apollinaris and his beloved native city of Clermont, the year 471 could hardly have brought more misery. Goths surrounded the proud Roman city. Morale was low. Defeat seemed inevitable. Then, quite literally, the cavalry arrived. A small group of men—just nineteen—charged across the plain to scatter the Gothic host. The sheer audacity of the surprise attack must have stunned the besieging army. The Goths, who are said to have numbered in the thousands, suffered heavy losses, and the city was delivered.

In the aftermath, the townspeople watching from behind the broken walls thronged to greet their plucky rescuers. It was an especially joyous reception because the leader of the the tiny cavalry contingent was one of their own, a certain Ecdicius, who had grown up in Clermont before returning to relieve the town with a private army he had raised entirely through his own exertions. Grateful townsfolk now kissed the dust off Ecdicius' armor and fought for the honor of embracing their victorious native son.

Sidonius, the city's bishop, was ecstatic. But the affair had been a close one for both Clermont and Sidonius. In his writings Sidonius might well have been justified in asking how a city in the great Roman Empire could have been left so defenseless. Ecdicius' raid should have been unnecessary. Where was the Roman army? Sidonius never did pose that question because he already knew the answer: The Roman army had been there all along, made up of Goths.

How the "Roman" army came to be composed of barbarian troops of an often renegade nature is in many ways the story of Rome's fall. It is the story of a people who seemingly lost confi­dence in themselves, a government that lost control of its army, and an army that lost control of its soldiers. It is a story of ambition, but also of miscalculation and finally failure.

More

[HoosierCowboy]

8. Mercs are the way to go

If Corporations are running things. Let Koch et al do the vetting and cough up the $30,000 a month it costs to hire a "Security Contractor"
If we didn't have foreign wars for the benefit of the 1%, our security needs could be answered by keeping a few Boy Scout Troops on active duty in Fort Dix.

[mother earth]

9. Way to go except when you realize they are playing BOTH sides of any given dispute, just to prolong

or heat it up. Then there's the fact that Koch bros. don't pay for the military expenses, taxpayers do...and this is the corporate welfare country.

The Boy Scouts should be paid more before we give the big bucks to the lawless too, wouldn't you say?

Though I do agree on having wars for l%, it really is all for empire, corporate empire.