But now, according to a report published by USAToday, that's exactly what President Donald Trump is considering doing with the war in Afghanistan, which has now gone on for nearly 16 years. Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and founder of Blackwater USA—now known as Academi—has pitched the plan, which would turn over the U.S. military advisory and training missions of local Afghan forces to private contractors.
It's unclear for whom Prince is pitching the plan. Under his leadership, Blackwater USA was heavily involved in counterinsurgency efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan during the George W. Bush presidency. He sold his interest in the company to private investors in 2010, and it has operated under the Academi name ever since. The report implies the contractors would be supplied by Academi—although it refers to it simply as "Blackwater"—but Prince now operates a company called Frontier Services Group that provides many of the same security services Blackwater USA/Academi has provided and is providing. According to the USAToday report, the plan would involve "embedding" the contractors with local Afghan units; currently, U.S. forces operate independently in relatively secure top-level facilities. The contractors would wear Afghan military uniforms, and operate under Afghan military orders. The report also states the plan would carry a price tag of about $10 billion a year, compared to the $40 billion the Pentagon is currently spending. But, there would be the question of how to ensure the new plan doesn't become another open-ended engagement, albeit at a substantially lower cost than is currently being expended. Meanwhile, The Military Times is reporting the aviation component of the plan would actually be conducted by a company called Lancaster6, which is led by Christiaan Durrant, an ex-Australian Air Force pilot. Previously, Durrant served as operations director of Prince's FSG. He also previously ran the "special aviation services" component of FSG known as EP Aviation, which has been operating in the conflict zone in Central Africa.
That report states Prince pitched his idea to the Afghan government first, in March:
I'd rather just have conscription so not everyone in the military is a reactionary POS and when ordered to shoot on their own countrymen they might think twice.
Jaxson Hall
Do you really think mercenaries motivated solely by financial gain to the extent that they kill for a living (state armies tend to believe they fight for some kind of higher good, some are in it for the pay) are going to overthrow the system that puts the proverbial bread on their table?
This, unless they really goof up like the Russian Empire did (one of many examples) and start feeding the army dog food tier rations, you won't find any sympathy from a volunteer army that was too indoctrinated to not enlist to begin with (albeit many are just poor and need the job).
Kayden Bennett
conscription is never coming back, America learned its lesson from the 60s.
Isaac Rivera
You can’t Privatize everything.
*Blocks YourPath*
Christian Kelly
No but the mercenaries wouldn’t have the ability to put down the revolt and the vets would side with the revolt.
Alexander Hernandez
The mercs won't overthrow the government. The unemployed and broke veterans (together with their sympathetic comrades in arms still in the service) will. Mercs (especially american ones) are fucking cowards and run at the first sign of resistance. Every time Blackwater has gotten in trouble it was because they killed a bunch of people while trying to escape.
Nicholas Hughes
when afghanistan falls apart its now the mercs fault not americas
Adam Evans
A S C E N D E D " " " A M E R I C A - F I R S T - I S M " " "
Jonathan Thomas
Also, I can't help that Dumpf is trying to be like Leopold II in turning his war in Afghanistan into his own private enterprise
Charles Reyes
black water doesnt play by the same rules as normal millitary. Pretty much the philosophy
The Iraqi Government revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq on September 17, 2007 after a shooting in which Blackwater contractors were later convicted of killing 14 Iraqi civilians.[110][111] The deaths occurred while a Blackwater Private Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development officials. The license was reinstated by the American government in April 2008, but in early 2009 the Iraqis announced that they had refused to extend that license.[112] In 2009, FBI investigators were unable to match the bullets from the shooting to those guns carried by Blackwater contractors, leaving open the possibility that insurgents also fired at the victims.[113] In a 2010 interview, Erik Prince, the company's founder, said the government is looking for dirt to support what he dismissed as "baseless" accusations that run the gamut from negligence, racial discrimination, prostitution, wrongful death, murder, and the smuggling of weapons into Iraq in dog-food containers. He pointed out that current and former executives have been regularly deposed by federal agencies.[114] Prince argued in September 2007 that there was a “rush to judgment” about Blackwater, due to "inaccurate information"
Jose Brown
The mercs will be the first response to the revolt, they have a vested interest in stopping the revolt and they'd probably enjoy gunning down "commies" as they see it.
John Jenkins
B-but the government haves no money, it's in debt. They dont fight for no money. Then again I won't be surprised if international corporations have the interest to fund those mercs to keep the state in power.
Dominic Cruz
Kojima god damn you
Nathan White
We've been played like a damn fiddle
Sebastian Scott
I guess at the end of the day Kojima predicts everything
Tyler Hughes
...
Mason Ramirez
Merced aren’t nearly as willing to die for there cause as hardcore revolutionaries.
did Reagan even do anything remotely as extreme as this?
Jayden Scott
No but Donald Rumsfeld proposed doing the exact same thing in a public speech that he gave the day before 9/11. And now there's more private contractors in Iraq than soldiers. fuck
Juan Butler
Dude it's the east india company.. in 100 years Afghani saints (normal people who pray) will come to America and start centers for their religion and people will donate big temples to them and suck their dicks and bougie people here will dress like them and say "Allah" and other shit.
Nathaniel Morgan
I feel a little dumb now as I thought the idea of a private military at the time MGS4 was released in 2008 was far fetched.
William Wilson
Shiiiiit, we 1600's now.
Jaxson Ortiz
Private armies have been banned in England since 1504.
Brody Gomez
But these aren't private armies, they're private regional security providers, not soldiers, but force allocation associates, not bombs and bullets, but personal force distribution resources :,)
Brayden Parker
Somebody post that webm from metal gear solid 2 on creating context and not content.
This is beautiful. It's a piece of mind, a massacre within the soul, I can't wait for when they'll suck and fuck. Then they will lick the cum like the desert need rain, the very desert where the war rages, where the eagles dare, the life is going wrong and the emty man can't see like a predator is a prey when he doesn't know the truth, the reality, they can't see because blindness is in them within without, and in the meantime death will come easy. Jesus saves… yes, when thet willbrealize the kingdom of god was always the kingdom of GOLD they will finally realize that this is neither sex or reality, that we have to wake up from this nightmare and that the east temple is between the
Isaiah Miller
So just an ordinary war then
Connor Russell
next time I'm ordering from McWarlord
John Watson
someone took shitposting with the leftcom flag to the next level
Jonathan Cruz
I thought private armies were generally a cyberpunk meme. In real life, you can't have your own highly advanced army to defend your evil laboratory because it costs too damn much and your megacorp can't keep it running and still make a profit. It's much, much cheaper to just bribe the government and indirectly use their military instead. That way, the taxpayers will foot the bill for the army that's defending your interests. In fact, the bill can be astronomically large now, because the government runs at a loss anyway.
Exactly! It's all bottomless debt.
The government will still be paying for these mercs, even for a merc air force! Hot damn. Next step: build an evil laboratory in Afghanistan.
Sebastian Perez
laughing_Europeans.jpg
Only the rich revolt in America. The only way to make people aware of the crimes of imperialism is conscription.
Connor Thompson
Former American vets have long history of political violence user.
Kayden Myers
If they do this, I am calling it the American East India Company. I knew that Trump had some regressive ideas, but I never expected him to look to the seventeenth century for a solution. That is exactly what this is. An imperialist power reduces the costs of running the empire by giving the governorship of a colony to a private corporation that does whatever it wants to in order to generate its own profits in that colony. Expect large-scale slaughters and explicit slavery.
Kayden Phillips
That's where you're wrong. Something much worse is about to happen. The mercenaries will oversee the extraction of resources in Afghanistan themselves and bleed the country white to make their profits.
Isaiah Walker
Individual violence for the most part. That's a lashing-out against the world, but not a revolt. Any person, no matter how influential or charismatic, has to base himself on a group in order to achieve anything. America has a million shooting sprees, but relatively few revolts, thanks to soft social control.
Ryan Reyes
you really think american vets are goin to revolt into anything pleasing for the workers? there's absolutely zero class consciousness here.
Christopher Foster
...
Liam Cooper
oh wew
Ayden Williams
E Pluribus Unum
Easton Mitchell
I'm lovin' it!
Matthew Martinez
good
Dylan Cooper
If it would be pay good enough, I would join. Why not?
Money, killing sandniggers and raping sandwhores? FUCK YEAH!(USER WAS BANNED FOR ZIONIST CUCKERY)
Jeremiah Sullivan
American military is in desperate need of privatization anyway. It's a huge, inefficient, bloated welfare queen factory where 95% of the "soldiers" never saw any combat. They even have women in it. Women. With their lower lung capacity, bone density, and muscle mass. American military is a paper tiger that killed less Nazis than Monte fucking negro, let alone Poland or Serbia or even France and Britain. Not even to mention that it managed to prevent 0 massacres during Balkan wars. Serbian ground forces forced UN to run with a tail between their legs, even when they had air superiority.
All the best soldiers go into private military contractors anyway. PMCs can pick and choose their own jobs. They can choose offensive jobs, where artillery kills everything and they just bayonet the corpses. National army has to do defensive jobs, like sitting and waiting to get shot, patrolling minefields, and other retarded shit like that. PMCs achieve much more results and pay much higher as well, because 100% of PMCs saw combat even before becoming PMCs while national soldiers get periods these days, and physically cant march a 20kg heavy machinegun for 20 kilometers any more. So, good! Private sector always provides superior service because of competition. Competition implies competitiveness, efficiency, industriousness, problem solving ability, innovative thinking, and working hard.
Let me just end the rant by just saying something about production. if production is private, it is in your interest to be as productive as possible because your wealth is directly proportional to your productivity if production is collective, your main interest is to get paid by the collective, you dont care about your personal productivity, you dont care about the quality of your labor, you dont care about working, you just want to receive from the collective and you want to avoid as much work as you can avoid, the whole thing becomes a race to the bottom
Michael Parker
WEW.
Connor Rogers
One step closer to Marian reforms. We'll have ourselves some nice civil wars in no time.
Carson Hernandez
I have seen more class consciousness in veterans than I have seen in anyone else. There is nothing like getting shot at to convince a person that something is wrong with the world.
Sebastian Taylor
...
Matthew Wright
As written by an ancap.
Liam Mitchell
...
Asher Mitchell
No, he's right. You are indeed full of shit. Mercenaries are just more expensive soldiers, and the notion that they are better than actual soldiers because free market is ancap bullshit.
Blake Davis
I'll just pay you to do my murders and protect my drug cartels.
Nicholas Carter
the efficiencies of the free-market proving itself once again.
Julian Gray
you can criticize till you are blue in the face, but no one sensible cares either point to a planned economy that is outproducing the free market/free world, or go away either use your criticism and build a better thing, or i dont have time to listen to what you have to say
difference between delivering results and mental gymnastics is the most fundamental one therefore its no surprise to find the left so concentrated in the academia where ideas do not have to work to survive meanwhile private sector, which delivers all the taxes and the results and everything, is almost exclusively right wing in principles
Christopher Morgan
First define the "free market."
Leo Edwards
fair competition, where winner is decided solely by his productivity and nothing else this way, the resources are used most productively, and nothing drives productivity more than fair competition no one is actually productive enough to monopolize the entire world, you cant fairly monopolize the whole world
fair competition is the primary generator of productivity, you are not going to get a cost effective, quality product or service from the government, the collective, or any other bullshit that has no competition if you dont have competition, you can charge whatever you want, and make is as shitty as you want
this is also why unironically libertarians consider huge corporations as anti-capitalistic huge corporations arent competing, they dont want competition, they want to lobby the government to eliminate their competition
James Moore
what you're looking for is mutualism, friend.
Cooper Fisher
Cool utopian perfect system there bud
Nathaniel Turner
we call ourselves libertarians, you call yourselves mutualists, but the thing is the ideas are 99.999% identical, the only real difference is that we really dont care about strawmaning others, nor are we petrified of reading basic economics out of fear of "capitalist propaganda" that bookchin guy of yours seem to call libertarians leftists, but i dont really care, the left-right thingie is trivial to most libertarians, who only really care about being left alone and being productive with their lives
racial bullshit is unproductive because of lack of personal responsibility (muh race, nothing is ever my fault, i can do no wrong, muh groupthink gives me excuses so i will never become productive) but so is every other collectivist bullshit (muh class, nothing is ever my fault, i can do no wrong, muh groupthink gives me excuses so i will never become productive)
