Mark Kleiman responds to my question about what’s wrong with mercenaries — contract private security people who provide security at U.S.-run Iraqi installations. Phil Carter has more and yet more. Mark’s and Phil’s posts, though stress that there’s nothing inherently immoral about the mercenaries themselves, but that using them is a bad idea that might lead to various problems.
That may be right; I’m not sure, and much depends on the particular circumstances and the particular implementation of the program. My point, though, was simply that there’s no inherent reason that we should be treat the mercenaries as morally less worthy (or less deserving of mourning) than private security guards and other people who do put themselves in harm’s way for money. Whether we should actually hire them or not is a different matter.
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