Dean Esmay has recently weighed in on Kos' comments about the murder of four civilians in Fallujah last week.
Dean, the kind soul that he is, remarks that "Zuniga's human," that he's said things he (Zuniga) now regrets, and observes (reasonably) that we've all done that before. Lord knows I have! :)
The problem is Kos hasn't really shown any remorse for his original comments. In fact, not only did he replace the original post with a milder one (the above link), this later post contains more than a little arrogant swagger.
For some reason I feel that Kos is not truly penitent. But that's just me.
And that's not why I'm posting about the situation now. To my mind nearly every blog that's posted about this (that I've read, anyway) has missed the point. The men that died in Fallujah were former members of the United States armed forces. They, too, served their fellow citizens. They, too, faced sacrifice, pain, hardship, and the very real chance of death in the service of their country.
Kos has said "As a former soldier, I have a natural kinship with our men and women in uniform. "
If so, he is one of the most miserably ignorant soldiers I've encountered.
One of the standard threads in the discussion about the Iraq War has been the ability of the United States to maintain force levels. More than one well-informed commentator has remarked that we are stretched thin, in many respects. While it is true that the US force structure faces challenges, those challenges are not across the board. In fact, in many ways there are too many people volunteering, or re-upping.
The shortages are fairly specific; military police, for example. The Army is facing that challenge by disbanding superfluous artillery groups and retraining the men as MPs. Other shortages include the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Civil Affairs battalions. From StrategyPage.com (February 9 entry):
"These units are actually company sized (about 140 troops, half of them officers) and were originally designed for one of them to support one division in combat. Only one of these battalions is active duty, the rest are reserve units. Most of the officers in the reserve battalions are government officials, business executives and professionals (doctors, lawyers and even a few clergy.). That experience, combined with the specialized training they get from the army, enables them to take care of displaced, hostile or leaderless civilian populations on the battlefield. This worked quite well in 1991, when reserve civil affairs officers quickly organized the civil administration in Kuwait right after the war. The civil affairs battalion was able to turn things over, in such good shape, to the returning Kuwaiti officials, that the Kuwaitis asked that they stick around for a few extra months. "
Also, from an earlier post (scroll down to the December 24 entry from the above link):
"The combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are in need of skilled civilian reinforcements. The Department of Defense is hiring hundreds of lawyers, engineers, interpreters, intelligence specialists and managers to support the operations in Afghanistan and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. The jobs pay from $35,000-125,000 a year, plus travel and living expenses. Military veterans are preferred, as some of the jobs require travel into dangerous parts of both countries. The people being hired advice the new Iraqi and Afghan government on how best to handle many reconstruction tasks, as well as giving the Department of Defense people on the spot who can accurately report about what is actually happening, or not happening."
What isn't mentioned in the above is the fact that the US faces (perfectly normal) attrition in their Special Operations Forces (SOF) structure as men reach retirement after twenty years.. The Army and the Navy face the same challenges -retaining Green Berets and SEALS- that the Air Force does with pilots, or all branches do with professionals such as lawyers and doctors. These men can obtain a civilian salary that is five or (in some cases) ten times times what they might make in the armed forces. After twenty years, that's hard to turn down.
So all the branches pay extra for doctors, lawyers, pilots, and other highly-qualified specialists, or do without.
In the case of the SOCOM specialists (especially in that case) the United States will always face a shortage. There are only so many superior soldiers/sailors/airmen to go around. One of the other challenges America faces is finding high-powered leaders to help shape the development in civil affairs in Iraq.
One of the ways that the US addresses this is by hiring retired SOCOM members as civilians in Iraq, which brings me back to Kos' comments.
I reiterate:
"As a former soldier, I have a natural kinship with our men and women in uniform." (emphasis added)
What Kos (painfully, obviously) misses is the basic fact that the "mercenaries" that he so despises are men who served twenty years, or more, in the US armed forces
That, in fact, the men he condemns as "mercenaries" are the same men he (says) he has a "natural kinship" with.
I suspect that, somehow, he'll fail to perceive the distinction.
As a parting aside: strictly speaking, a true (professional) mercenary is one who will honorably serve a contract, then offer himself to the highest bidder afterwards. In other words, a true mercenary would serve a contract for the Iraq Authority, and then (after finishing an earlier contract) serve equally well under the ageis of the Baathists. A good example would be the condotierres in 14th century Italy, one of whom was John Hawkwood.
My challenge is this: find even a half-dozen (former SOCOM) "mercenaries" who would do so.
I didn't think so...
UPDATE: as of 04:30 Eastern Time, Kos' site is unavailable. I caught a message about changing servers earlier. With luck I'll be able to update the links to the Kos posts.
Ok, Sunday afternoon and the links work again now! I assume the server switch is accomplished.
I'm not a reader of kos, so can't speak to his writing skills, but from what I hear second hand, he is a good writer. As such, he realizes the power of words and recognizes the difference between a word's dictionary meaning and its connotation. While "mercenary" may be technically correct, the tone and context of his original post clearly indicates kos is focusing on the highly negative connotation of the word. As such, I cannot buy his "explanation", or that of the the rabble that have risen to his defense.
Posted by: Phil Winsor at April 5, 2004 8:29 PM