The Mercenary and the Citizen-Soldier

Scott Horton

"There was a very amusing repartee which Giovanni Acuto [John Hawkwood] made to certain friars minor, who, coming to him at one of his castles where he was, called Montecchio, about a mile from the town of Cortona, presenting themselves before him said, 'Sir, God grant you peace.' And he quickly replied, 'God take from you your alms.' The friars, as men struck with terror, said, 'Sir, why say you so to us?' And Master Giovanni [Sir John] answered, 'Rather should I ask you: Why say you so to me?' Said the friars, 'We thought to say well.' And Master Giovanni [Sir John] replied, 'How think you to say well when you come to me and say to be, "God make you die of hunger?" Know you not that I live by war, so fo you live by alms; so that the reply that I made you was like your greeting. And after doing some other business which they had with him, they took their leave, and returned to the convent of Castiglione, in the Aretino."

- Franco Sacchetti, Il trecentonovelle clxxxi (1399)



The April 2, 2007 issue of The Nation, now accessible on line, contains an extended extract from Jeremy Scahill's fascinating and magnificently documented new book, Blackwater: The Rise of America's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

One brief excerpt, found near the beginning of the book, is grimly revealing of the mindset that has led simultaneously to the assault on the traditional military values of the nation and to the rise of the new American mercenary.

"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," Rumsfeld thundered. "It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." He told his new staff, "You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world.... [But] the adversary's closer to home," he said. "It's the Pentagon bureaucracy." Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, "I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

These remarks were uttered twenty-four hours before jetliners collided with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, transforming our world. This immense tragedy provided Rumsfeld with a vacuum of silence and shock in which he could quickly act to achieve his objectives. Rumsfeld's solution has been to contract, to outsource, even the most critical military functions. In this process, certain military contractors have been more equal than others. Most frequently, they are contractors, like Blackwater, with tight personal and funding relationships with the Republican party.

Before there was a President, a Congress or a Supreme Court, before any thought had been given to a Constitution, much less a Bill of Rights, America had its first institution: the Army. It was directed by a commander-in-chief - the only one in our history not to serve simultaneously as president. And that Army was the initial repository of national values, particularly of the notion of a citizen-soldier, putting his life at risk for the promise of modest pay and little more, called to duty for altruistic reasons - not for cash or power, prepared to relinquish his soldierly calling and return to civilian life at the end of hostilities. (By and large the Founding Fathers did not think much of a standing army; indeed, much of what they had to say on this subject is so obscene one would have difficulties printing it even today). One of the foundational values of the American Republic is the concept of a citizen-soldier, a concept presented eloquently by George Washington in his farewell address to the troops from November 3, 1783, and preserved at the heart of the nation's defense strategy for more than two centuries.

The Commander in chief conceives little is now wanting to enable the Soldiers to change the military character into that of the Citizen, but that steady and decent tenor of behaviour which has generally distinguished, not only the Army under his immediate command, but the different detachments and seperate Armies through the course of the war. From their good sense and prudence he anticipates the happiest consequences; and while he congratulates them on the glorious occasion, which renders their services in the field no longer necessary, he wishes to express the strong obligations he feels himself under for the assistance he has received from every Class, and in every instance... He flatters himself however, they will do him the justice to believe, that whatever could with propriety be attempted by him has been done, and being now to conclude these his last public Orders, to take his ultimate leave in a short time of the military character, and to bid a final adieu to the Armies he has so long had the honor to Command, he can only again offer in their behalf his recommendations to their grateful country, and his prayers to the God of Armies. May ample justice be done them here, and may the choicest of heaven's favours, both here and hereafter, attend those who, under the devine auspices, have secured innumerable blessings for others; with these wishes, and this benediction, the Commander in Chief is about to retire from Service. The Curtain of seperation will soon be drawn, and the military scene to him will be closed for ever.

Washington gives us the vision of the old Roman general Cincinnatus, called to serve in time of crisis, he does so with no expectations of riches or power, and he returns to plow his fields when the fighting is done. It is assuredly a romantic and unrealistic notion. But it is also an essential element of the American idea.

In their late addresses, George Washington and a later general-become-president, Dwight David Eisenhower, warned of the need to guard this ideal with care from the encroachment of a defense industry. Their admonitions were taken carefully for generations. But today, the ultimate threat they warned against has come to pass. We have a defense establishment that dwarfs anything that Washington or Eisenhower could ever have imagined. And rather than influence the Government and its defense policy, this military industrial complex has to all appearances come to exercise de facto control over the defense budgeting process. Multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts with Halliburton and Bechtel are one manifestation of this largely unreported phenomenon. The rise of the new mercenary army which Blackwater symbolizes is another.

With Congress slowly regaining the faculties of speech and sight after what can only be termed a four-year coma, I expect the curtain to be pulled back on some dark and unseemly things – largely unnoticed or if noticed, not understood by the mainstream media. One of the most important issues for the long-term image and self-understanding of our nation and its armed forces is the rise of a new class of contractors consisting of soldiers of fortune. Generals Fay and Jones already noted in their report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib that private military contractors played a major role in wrong doing there and that their presence undermined morale and discipline at the prison. These criticisms sound with regularity from field commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Scahill has collected a number of disturbing episodes.

Blackwater is for many reasons a worthy subject of study: funded and empowered by US tax dollars, promoted by the US government, presided over by a revolving door of functionaries who flow between posts in the Republican party, appointive office in the American national security apparatus and Blackwater. Jeremy Scahill's new book is a brilliant exposé and belongs on the reading list of any conscientious citizen.

What is at stake here is our nation's model of a citizen army, because that model - Washington's vision - can not be easily reconciled with a world in which Blackwater and other contractors thrive, performing an ever growing portion of the functions traditionally handled by the uniformed military. To be clear, the mercenary industry has a long and dark history, and what it portends for society is ominous. The remarks of John Hawkwood, reported by Franco Sacchetti at the end of the 14th century, which I have set out above, are telling. (Sacchetti calls him Giovanni Acuto, or John the sharp-sighted.) Hawkwood was one of the greatest of the late medieval mercenaries, who led a band of Englishmen in the service of the pope and then other Italian states. His interest was simple: lucre. And his interest was achieved by fomenting and perpetuating war. The role played by mercenaries in medieval and early modern history demonstrates how these interests played out. The mercenary thrived in a world of treachery, petty dictatorship and war. Life fit the Hobbesian dictum: "No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

For George Washington and his contemporaries, the mercenary was a symbol of a corrupt and enslaving Europe that they sought to avoid. The citizen-soldier, by contrast, was the model for a democracy that places great value on stability and peace, that abjures military adventurism. But today, under the corrupting influence of those potent narcotics, money and power, all these lessons seem forgotten.

Each civilization faces certain tests, and one of them is whether it can remember its own history. The time for remembering has come. Will we elect the world of the mercenary or that of the citizen-soldier? I don't believe they can subsist side-by-side.
Posted 8:54 PM by Scott Horton [link]