Are mercenaries good or bad?

I have been a soldier, a sailor, and a mercenary. All have had been great experiences. My time as a contractor was very much controlled in our ROEs.

I was in Iraq as a soldier when Blackwater was pretty much running unchecked. They really needed to be reigned in. They were not on the same page as the military commanders in the AOs. Not saying they were bad guys just saying there was a disconnect with command and control.

As a contractor in Afghanistan we were kept watch on and we worked directly with the military for the same goal. If you could not play ball you were put on a plane home.

My time in the Mozambique Straits I worked for the Mozambique government and you just made up the rules as you went along. As long as you were hunting pirates nobody cared what you did on the side. I had to leave because of that. The contractors were as bad as the pirates.

My point is that there has to be somebody to hold contractors accountable or or they can get out of control very quickly.

They are not necessarily good or bad but a reflection of their leadership and the controls which their contracts place on them.

They've been part of every American conflict since the Barbary Pirate wars - even got a line in the Marine Corps Hymn for that one (unless you thought O'Bannon's 8 Marines had a greater effect than the 500 mercenaries they hired) - and they'll continue to be part of every one for the foreseeable future. And the reason they will is because there will always be a need for them, whether it's simple lack of trained bodies or freeing up regulars for other missions or taking advantage of their unofficial status.

They are an immensely complicated subject. Rather than speak directly to them, let me draw a parallel through metaphor.

You are a Home Developer. You are building a new 1000 housing development, inside an already occupied suburban sprawl. You have your primary crew who works for you, and has for years. They do good work, are trustworthy, and their cost is justified.

However, there is specialized work that you do not need full time. You hire contractors to do that work. Painters, electricians, plumbers, you name it. You vet these guys, and for the most part you trust them.

However, sometimes they need specialized work because these houses had change requests like hot tubs, or sky lights, or whatever. So they hire sub-contractors. You don't know these sub-contractors. Each tier below you, the level of trust & confidence degrades just a little bit more. Additionally, since you are the one paying the final bill, the money has to be made up "somewhere," so the tolerances get looser about what is acceptable.

Rules that apply to your guys don't apply to these guys, because you aren't the one directly paying them. You can't fire them because you aren't really their boss, and because their work is so specialized, there is no one to replace them if you did. Cowboy mentality creeps in.

Now what does this have to do with us?

Well some things we explicitly have to do. Somethings we are expressly prohibited from doing. Private Security firms (aka Mercenaries) fill that niche. They exist because of necessity. Nature abhors a vacuum.