the bush regime never fails to provide us with fresh surprises. after much ballyhoo concerning largely american mercenaries, bush and co. are looking to create foreign legions of darkies to do their dirty work for them.
those bush advisors were evidently deadly serious about the benefits of outsourcing after all.
perhaps after consultation with sharon last week, bush has decided that the only army in the world – IDF apart – worth having would be rwandan.
billmon’s quote from heart of darkness was right on.
It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’
the problem that these latter day romans in the white house are facing is that in the post-colonial world, there are scant few enough people to want to go to war for whitie or even to let him into the country.
slavery, colonialism, world wars have taken their toll. people don’t want to travel to foreign shores to persecute other miserables. there are problems and joys enough at home. in any case, the long term rates the americans will have to pay these foreign legions for their dirty work make them a losing proposition.
for now though they are cheap at the price – $660 million for five years worth, a tiny fraction of the billions the US is paying to keep american regulars and private military contractors in Iraq.
somewhat enheartening is that if republican americans do succeed in creating and arming these foreign legions, they will have trained and armed and equipped a fighting force as likely one day to throw their own legions out of africa and asia as to support pax americana.
look at the success the americans have had with the iraqis.
and if the americans do succeed in creating and deploying hutu legions, i cannot imagine their european allies smiling on the project. even the germans and japanese will have to rearm seriously at that point.
the republican americans will probably have more luck with the robot soldiers that they are preparing for the next decades of the project of the new american century.
what a great incentive for peace…war with no body bags.
and brigades of overweight american teenagers to man the battle stations by remote. life and death and war just one great LAN party.
the benefits and convenience of modern technology.
on the other hand, i wonder how happy the republican hutu legions will be to give up their commissions at that point.
it’s not as if there aren’t other things to spend R&D money on: global warming, fossil fuels replacement, new clean chemical processes, ocean water desalination programs to name just a few which might have bright commercial prospects. americans could clean up their exhorbitant lifestyle and pay off their enormous national debt flogging these technological marvels to the world.
no better to spend a fortune pillaging the homelands of others to pay for a way of life soon to go the way of the dodo, wars won or wars lost. in any case, the accumulation of an unrivalled capital in hate is certain to go on paying dividends for decades.