Bill O’Reilly: Why not raise a 25,000-man global mercenary army to fight ISIS?

Hotair ^ | 09/23/2014 | AllahPundit

[ansel12]

So was the ‘Dogs of War’ and ‘Dark of the Sun’, and people love the Westerns and Japanese ones.

[gusty]

A more contemporary example is the end of the Algerian War in the early 60’s. France had to disband a number of Foreign Legion units because they mutinied against the civilian leaderships’ policy, right or wrong. Many Legionnaires went to war against France as the OAS (Secret Army Organization) and tried to assassinate DeGaulle and waged a terrorist campaign in both mainland France and Algeria. The French Foreign Legionaire doesn't have any loyalty to France, their loyalty is to the Legion and the Legion only. This type of idiocy would have the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves. Jefferson included the use of mercenaries in the Declaration of Independence as one of the reasons that justified our Revolution. O’Reilly, like his books, is a superficial thinker. He is more barroom blowhard than historical scholar. This proposal of his is pure comic book fantasy. I predict his next idea will be the recruitment of a force of superheros, like Superman and Batman, to take on ISIS.

[gusty]

The “Dogs of War” was a great book, but not so good movie.

[gusty]

Times have changed. In those days one joined the military with the expectation that they would spend years, even decades, away from the homeland. Armies in the late 19th Century were not all concerned about the soldiers family life. There was no yellow ribbons tied around trees. The British Army encouraged its men to go native. Native in that cohabiting with the local females was not frowned upon. A fresh officer would be sent to the Northwest Frontier, we call it Waziristan today, and he did not expect to return to England for years upon years. Thus he usually did not marry and start a family until his 40’s after his service was over, not during like we do it today.

Sometimes things went horribly wrong. One French force's commander went Kurtz, and launched a killing spree that would have horrified Reinhard Heydricht. The French had to send another column into the interior to destroy the rogue force, which they did with heavy casualties.