U.N.: Blackwater contractors are ‘mercenaries.’

U.N.: Blackwater contractors are ‘mercenaries.’

“Private security companies operate without supervision or accountability in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and represent a new form of mercenary activity,” according to a new U.N. report. As Spencer Ackerman points out, Blackwater CEO Erik Prince recently said that he didn’t like his employees being called “mercenaries,” which he coined “a slanderous term, kind of an inflammatory word to malign us.”

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous. If a prince bases the defense of his state on mercenaries he will never achieve stability or security. For mercenaries are disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined, and disloyal; they are brave among their friends and cowards before the enemy; they have no fear of God, they do not keep faith with their fellow men; they avoid defeat just so long as they avoid battle; in peacetime you are despoiled by them, and in wartime by the enemy. The reason for all this is that there is no loyalty or inducement to keep them on the field apart from the little they are paid; and this is not enough to make them want to die for you. They are only too ready to serve in your army when you are not at war; but when war comes they either desert or disperse.