“Blackwater and other “contractors” do more than protect US civilian/state department personnel.”
Yes, I aware that other contractors (not sure why you felt the need to put that in quotes) do other things in Iraq. However, we were discussing what Blackwater was hired to do and that’s to protect US civilian dignitaries. And they do it very effectively.
As far as you and others using the term mercenary. 99% of the time it’s used in a pejorative way intentionally. There is a distinction between what Blackwater is doing and what traditional mercenaries do. Mercenaries has historically been hired to fight wars that a county either did not want to fight itself or to augment their forces by using personnel hired from other countries. Those are offensive operations. Blackwater was hired to provide DEFENSIVE operations. Sometimes, as in this case, it requires offensive actions, but the MAIN purpose is to defend those they’re hired to keep alive.
1. I put it in quotes because the word “contractor” is very new when discussing such companies. They’ve been called “mercenaries” for hundreds of years, but only recently has “contractor” come into use for this purpose.
2. Blackwater does more than protect “US civilian dignitaries” in Iraq. They have other contracts outside the US government, including private companies providing logistics support. They do so ARMED and they use force.
They fight, primarily in a defensive capability, but they fight.
I use the term “mercenary” because that’s what it is.
I understand it’s come to be used a a perjorative, but so have a lot of perfectly cromulent words.
It’s obvious that they’re needed by both government and private agencies, so the term “contractor” was dreamed up to keep the stupid press and their dim-witted accomplices complacent.
When shipping companies hired such men to guard their fleets, they were “mercenaries”, just as now.
I have to disagree- mercenaries have been hired, historically, for a variety of roles, both offensive and defensive. For example, the Byzantine emperor had a bodyguard composed of Nordic mercenaries. In fact, hiring mercenaries as bodyguards has been very common, historically, because some rulers felt that foreign bodyguards, with no local political ties, could be trusted to be more loyal than locals (so long as they were paid).
The fact that Blackwater was hired primarily for a defensive role does not change the fact that they are mercenaries by any historical definition of the word.