When "Joe Thug" Comes Marching Home Again...

Department of Heads-in-the-sand

We have a crime-wave ready to wash over us. And we won't be prepared--because almost no one is looking at this!

"Once you're used to living in a lawless world, the transition back to civilization will be stressful at best..."

When the Iraq "redeployment" comes, what kind of men are coming home? (I purposely left women out of this issue; the statistical significance of the problem is probably low for women. Time will tell...)

Leaving all the whys and WTF about the Iraq "war", let's talk about the PMCs (private military corporations). Not the companies that have routinely ripped us off for hundred of millions of dollars. I mean their employees: private soldiers, mercenaries, hired-guns, "dogs of war".

According to GlobalGuerillas, who cites an industry estimate, there are now 35,000 PMC employees in Iraq. ACSBlog.org, says in Congress, UN Consider Legal Issues About Private Military Contractors, the figure is closer to 45,000 (making it a ratio of 3 US soldiers to 1 contract soldier). [FYI: In Operation Desert Storm (1991), the ratio was 100:1. ] Slate.com has an interesting post about Hired Guns: What to do about military contractors run amok. And the GAO estimates PMC soldiers number over 48,000.

And check out Triple Canopy Operator Allegedly Shot Civilians for Sport at The Spy Who Billed Me, a blog on the PMC industry. RJ Hillhouse has a fascinating history:

Dr. Hillhouse has run Cuban rum between East and West Berlin, smuggled jewels from the Soviet Union and slipped through some of the world’s tightest borders. From Uzbekistan to Romania, she's been followed, held at gunpoint and interrogated. Foreign governments and others have pitched her for recruitment as a spy. (They failed.) A former professor and Fulbright fellow, Dr. Hillhouse earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Michigan. Her next novel, Outsourced, a spy thriller about private military and intel corporations, will be published in May 2007 by Forge Books.

An unknown percentage of these "soldiers of fortune" are responsible human beings. I propose that the number of the good ones are far outnumbered by the bad ones. No one has the statistics. No one! This unregulated industry is a time-bomb. Human nature suggests that (1) any one in it for the money, glory and/or power is not one of the good guys; and (2) there have always been men attracted to the "glory of war". Although, to be fair, mercenaries helped us win the Revolutionary War.

We know from the Abu Ghraib scandal that private contractors were in charge of US soldiers guarding the prisoners or were Department of Defense-hired interrogators. There have been reports that some of these thugs were employed by prisons here in the US and had been disciplined and/or fired for prisoner abuse. A few well-placed "now hiring" ads drew them out, and they scurried out of the woodwork like cockroaches, signed the employment contracts promising better money than they'd ever dreamed of, and they climbed on the plane to the Middle East. And in the ME, they found that they had few rules to follow and no prosecution for any crime they committed. What heaven! You can imagine them asking themselves, "Why can't it be this way back home?"

Fast forward to the end of our presence in Iraq. Men will be coming home, some of whom had no morals, scruples or value systems before they went over there. Deprived of their big paychecks, likely none of which was saved, and of the "anything goes" that they had operated under in Iraq, what will they do?

Returning soldiers, such as the "ready-reservists" and National Guard, may be faced with unemployment, although by federal law, an employer has to keep their job open for them. But what about the thugs who were unemployed at the time they signed on? What will they do?

My prediction is: they will gravitate to gangs, take to serious crime, turn to alcohol and/or drugs, become "drug lords". Maybe scope out a woman who looks weak and prey on her; maybe knock her around some "when she deserves it". I mean, what do you do with that "mean streak" that sustained you in Iraq, that brought so much satisfaction?

I've been concerned about this for some months now, so when I had an email exchange with Dr. Hillhouse of The Spy Who Billed Me blog that said:

The weird thing about Iraq and the contractors is that these guys are constantly coming and going back to the States. The typical rotation is 90 days. So they are around now, coming and going. I knew one former SEAL who was supposed to be back in California for a few months before possibly returning to Iraq. The operator couldn't stand it. He packed his duffel bag back up and headed back to Iraq after less than a week. I know another operator who did the same thing in reverse. The job in Iraq went south and he was back here after a couple of weeks. He's headed back to Iraq again now.

And yes, they scare me and I'm not the only one. I've discussed this with friends in both the Pentagon and the intelligence community who express the same concern. Unlike the soldiers and Marines returning home, the issue with the contract soldiers is that these guys are used to operating in a world with few restrictions and fewer consequences for their actions. Shooting civilians often doesn't even cost them their job (and allegedly cost others their job when they reported the probable murder.) Granted they do have their own funky code of ethics among one another, but once you're used to living in a lawless world, the transition back to civilization will be stressful at best...

"Stressful, at best"? And what does "at worst" constitute?

If people in the biz are concerned, shouldn't we be, too?