Corporate Warriors, Sometimes Foreign Legions

Today's NYT, April 2, 2004, carries an article about the larger context of the story of the 4 Americans whose bodies were mutilated in Iraq, "Private U.S. Guards Take Big Risks for Right Price".

While the mutilation of these human beings in Iraq was tragic, and will not be made right by the mullahs promising to halt such barbarities in the future, it is important for Americans to recognize what has been developing for some years now as an integral aspect of the American Empire.

Even when the soldiers (private guards) are from the U.S. rather than Great Britain or elsewhere, they are really part of an American Foreign Legion. These soldiers are a part of the kind of volunteer, standing army that some of the Founding Fathers, Classical Republicans, warned about as the essence of Empire. These men do not need to pledge allegiance, with or without the phrase"Under God," to the United States of America, or to its Constitution.

It is well to remember that in the popular movie,"The Gladiator," the heroic Spaniard/Roman's last words had nothing to do with"Restore the Republic," or any such impossible nonsense, but rather,"Free my Men," an acknowledgement that the personal loyalties of a nascent feudalism had already replaced the Rule of Law in Rome.

It would appear that the American Government has no such feelings of responsibility for its hired guns, and which makes the title of a World War Two movie,"They Were Expendable," take on a whole new meaning.