Should U.S. Recruit Non-citizens?

[Peeping Tom]

Considering the numbers of troops on friendly foreign soil, your statement is correct. The deployment in Germany isn't doing much, yet it alone represents a very capable force, probably better than anything else in the world.

The likelihood of America employing mercenaries is about the same as it bringing back absolute monarchy

 

[Drunken Master]

What I meant is that the mentality associated with the right to arms, etc. always regarded mercenaries as the lowest form of life and as absolutely destructive to liberty. These values and beliefs date back to colonial times and beyond, and aren't going to disappear anytime soon (as can be seen in many of the posts in this very thread). I don't think that even the proposal in the initial post for a foreign legion would be politically sellable.

You don't watch Dog, the Bounty Hunter, do you?

 

[Truncador]

You don't watch Dog, the Bounty Hunter, do you?

I don't know what this means, but a bounty hunter isn't a mercenary. A mercenary is a person who renders military service to a Sovereign he isn't a subject of in exchange for pay.

 

[Drunken Master]

I don't know what this means, but a bounty hunter isn't a mercenary. A mercenary is a person who renders military service to a Sovereign he isn't a subject of in exchange for pay.

Dog the Bounty Hunter is an awful reality TV show following the antics of an neolithic bounty hunter and his grotesque troll of a wife. The US has long had a fascination with "enforcers" who operate just slightly outside the bounds of the law - mercenaries included. And the idea of a mercenary needing to be a foreigner is archaic - see the huge number of "contractors" operating in Iraq - although it is perhaps significant that they are not called such, they are mercenaries in everything but name.

There remains a heavy romanticisation of the ****. Pick up any given American gun enthusiast magazine if you want confirmation.

And, um - why is m e r c banned???

 

[Truncador]

The US has long had a fascination with "enforcers" who operate just slightly outside the bounds of the law - mercenaries included

The American figure of the outlaw hero as embodied in the likes of Dirty Harry, Rambo, Spiderman, or the A-Team is a cross between the knight of the medieval chanson de geste and the Puritan Saint. This figure never fights for money, but for right alone; he is a soldier, but a soldier of God (and thus always stands outside of Earthly authority and laws). Nothing could be farther removed from a genuine mercenary.

As to gun zines: The reason American gun zines exist at all is because the ancestors of their editors feared and despised professional soldiers so much that they insisted on a civilian monopoly on the bearing of arms.

More generally, I rest my case on the widespread social opprobrium towards mercenaries on the posts in this thread invoking the example of the Roman Empire. The association of mercenaries with imperial hubris and social decline isn't something they just pulled out of their asses as though out of nowhere; it forms part of a tradition that arrived on North American soil with the first White settlers.

 

[oldjones]

…edit…More generally, I rest my case on the widespread social opprobrium towards mercenaries on the posts in this thread invoking the example of the Roman Empire. The association of mercenaries with imperial hubris and social decline isn't something they just pulled out of their asses as though out of nowhere; it forms part of a tradition that arrived on North American soil with the first White settlers.

From Hessians to Rambo is a bit of a stretch, but interesting reading. I'm wont to point out that North America, and America, the United States of, are far from the same thing. The first white settlers were Viking pirates and rebels. The Spanish conquistadors and their English imitators were little better. I'm sure they'd be all for having all the arms they could afford, but they'd likely jump at mercenary's jobs, if offered. The habitants of Quebec, certainly valued their weapons, but understood the value of allying themselves with the First Nations. Roused in arms, they were a true militia, like the Pigrims.