This is very bad news for Ukrainians. Unlike Russian soldiers, who have family in Ukraine or find out when they arrive there that they have been brainwashed by Putin’s propaganda, Syrians are not emotionally involved in this conflict.
They are not in danger of having a “burst of conscience” leading them to throw down their arms and desert.
They go there to “do a job”.
They, therefore, risk being even more ruthless than the Russian soldiers.
It happens in every conflict.
Shakespeare called them “dogs of war”. I prefer to say “the scavengers”.
Vultures attracted by the smell of blood. They go to war as heroin addicts go to a shooting gallery. To have their hit.
Their kick.
Unlike the members of the International Brigades, who came from all over the world to fight alongside the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, these warmongers do not take up arms to defend values or a cause.
They go to the front for the money. Or what they call “adventure”.
For them, there is nothing more beautiful than a city that is collapsing, a civilization that is imploding, a city where law and order no longer regulate human behavior, and where everything, even the worst monstrosities, is permitted.
They’re watching this, and they’re as excited as Charlie was in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
ARMY FOR HIRE
And there are also private militias, such as the American giant Blackwater, the French company Secopex, the German agency Xeless Group or the Russian group Wagner, which took part in the wars in Syria and Libya.
Parallel armies that heads of state can literally rent.
In Iraq, the Blackwater company has been implicated in massacres and acts of torture.
In 2007, four “employees” of Blackwater (now Academi) fired on Iraqi civilians indiscriminately. Fourteen civilians, including women and children, were killed, seventeen others were injured.
Sentenced in 2015, these four mercenaries were pardoned by Trump in December 2020.
According to the organization Transparency International, these private armies had, in 2016, pocketed more than two hundred billion dollars in contracts.
It’s big business.
The more wars there are around the world, the more these companies prosper.
AS GERALD GALLANT
It’s still crazy…
States can do business with subcontractors to wage a war!
“Security expert” companies that kill not to defend a cause, but out of financial interest, period. These “paramilitaries” are not soldiers. They are hired, killers. Like Gérald Gallant, Frank Sheeran ( The Irishman ), or Richard Kuklinski ( The Iceman ).
According to the British daily Times, last January the Russian Wagner Group flew in more than 400 Russian mercenaries from Africa to carry out a special mission: to assassinate Zelensky.
The order came from the Kremlin.
What’s the difference between that and a mob boss murdering a rival?
