By Jon Elmer
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2008
Blackwater: The rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army
Jeremy Scahill
Nation Books 2007
The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism
Naomi Klein
Knopf Canada 2007
The Global War On Terror did not give birth to mercenary warfare: the Pharaohs used mercenaries, as did the Persians, Napoleon and Alexander the Great. The Romans and the British deployed soldiers-for-hire to police native rebellions, particularly in the twilight of their empires. Indeed, 19th century American industrialists and statesmen, lionized in so many textbooks and park monuments, made private security forces-particularly the infamous Pinkertons-an integral element in American social and political history. As Pinkerton was to private policing in the U.S. in the 19th century, Blackwater USA is to the American military of the 21st century: a symbolic expression of systemic capitalist forces running far deeper than a single company.
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