They
Owe Us for the Flying Tigers
Uncle
Bill Warner
A
mercenary is someone who takes up a weapon for a fee. Money, not
national honor, is the keyword. Most people are familiar with the
Hessians, (Germans) who signed on with the Brits to suppress the
upstart colonists under George Washington. About 22,000 of these
guys came over, hired out by their king, and when the Brits beat
a hasty retreat, most of 'em blended in quietly and their descendants
are today living in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
The Nepalese
Ghurkas have been shoring up the British Army for years. Then there
is the French Foreign Legion, where you can supposedly invent any
name and nationality to sign up for some dirty duty. Of course,
this has traditionally attracted criminals running from the law
and ex-soldiers from the losing side of a war. After WWII, many
ex-nazis went there looking for work, and the Legion was a pretty
attractive deal. After 3 years of a 5 year enlistment, a Legionnaire
becomes a French citizen...sooner if he is wounded in combat.
A group of
American mercenaries in the pay of the Chinese before the U.S. got
into World War II was the American Volunteer Group ( AVG) , known
popularly as the "Flying Tigers." They got paid good wages,
with bonuses for each Japanese plane shot down. Not being in the
Chinese army, they were not subject to the rules governing prisoners
of war, and could have been summarily shot if captured. But the
money beckoned... And how about all of those ex-Nazi rocket scientists
who we brought over here after World War II and made U.S. citizens?
They worked for NASA, under the famous Dr. Wehrner Von Braun who
put the U.S. on the Moon, remember? Did they do it for love of America,
or did they get private compensation in the form or citizenship
and high salaries? Sounds rather mercenary to me...
Ever hear of
Blackwater USA? They are a private company which is getting 37 million
bucks from the Pentagon to hire civilian former foreign commandos
and police from places like Chile and South Africa to do firearms
training and such as independent contractors for our military and
to guard oil wells and such. Welcome, non-citizens!
Right now the
U.S. is having a hard time filling its military with U.S.citizens,
despite outrageous offers of money for signing up. A huge portion
of our people in Iraq are being "extended", which is like
an involuntary draft, and is not too popular with Reservists who
never signed on to be part of a permanent army of occupation. Many
want out.
As our present
government does not want to institute conscription at this time,
what with Congressional elections looming down the line and a Republican
majority just barely hanging on by its teeth as the public support
of the Iraq occupation is going sour, what will happen? Will we
turn things over to the warlike Kurds, the Saddam-supporting Sunnis,
or the majority Shia opening the door to civil war as our troops
wave tearful farewells over the fantails of their departing troop
ships? You'll recall we went in and ousted the secular Sunnis, the
ones that were holding it all together, albeit brutally. We say
we have to stay there and "keep the peace" ... that is
why we have built so many permanent bases. Incidentally, we need
to be there to make sure that democracy does not work. The last
thing we want is for the majority Shi'ites to take control and turn
Iraq into a fundamentalist Muslim country like their neighbor; oil
rich and religiously-controlled Iran. If they spoke with a united
voice about things like U.S. getting out of Israel, and controlled
about half the world's oil supply and prices, they would have us
by the ... well, you know.
So, what is
left to us? Hire more mercenaries! It is obvious. We have already
outsourced our industry, paying foreign workers pennies on the dollar
to take jobs away from American workers, so why not pay them to
fill the ranks of our military? We are already taking in non-citizens,
mainly Latinos, with the offer of citizenship if they are killed
(which would mean their families would benefit, not them personally).
We're even now engaged in recruiting more "illegals."
U.S. recruiters have just recently been thrown out of a high school
in Tijuana!
I propose going
to China and offering to take all the criminals that the People's
Republic has locked up and offering them a deal something like the
French Foreign Legion does. China would be a good choice, not just
because we could pay them next to nothing, but because we are already
fighting this war on money borrowed from them! Besides, they owe
us for the Flying Tigers...
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