...is Paul Wolfowitz! Amazing in that the taxpayers of America are still paying his salary! That is, however, a paltry sum compared to the billions of dollars his Iraq venture is costing us.
Now, having completed his demonstration project in the use of naked force in Iraq(They'll Welcome us! They'll Cheer Us! They'll Throw Flowers At Us!), Wolfowitz is resurrecting another idea from the days of empire: hire bandits as mercenaries. Now, this has worked pretty well over the millenia. A lot of empires have had a lot of success in getting bands of armed men to do their dirty work for them. Of course, it has often wound up being a bad thing. As in Rome, where the Vandals eventually decided to go for the Goose instead of settling for the Golden Egg. They sacked Rome, when they'd been hired to protect it.
We, too, have on occasion tried to use 'militias' to help us out. We don't seem to have the knack, however, like the English and the French and the Germans and Spanish(to a lesser degree) had a few centuries ago. Our experience hiring the Khmer Rouge to clean up after us after we had bombed Cambodia into chaos is one example. Heck, we hired the Taliban to fight the Soviet Union! That little foray has wound up costing us a bundle of money, a lot of lives, and the heartbreak of September 11. Then there is Chalabi and Associates. They told us they could run Iraq for us, if we paid them enough. Somehow, that didn't work out either.
No, given our track record at hiring surrogates to do our fighting for us, I think we should tell Mr. Wolfowitz "Thanks, but no thanks."
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