Excellent article by Alan Bock on Antiwar.com about Blackwater and the impact of mercenaries. Even the much despised Machiavelli warned against the dependence on mercenaries like the US is currently doing in Iraq and within the US at the same time with Blackwater.

This is what Machiavelli said:

 ”Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous,” he wrote, “and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy … They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant among themselves, yet when foreigners came they showed what they were.”

While we’re on the topic of Blackwater, also check this article on Salon; Red, white and mercenary in Iraq, which argues that “under the cloak of freedom, the U.S. exempted Blackwater and other contractors from Iraqi law — and destroyed its own democratic credibility.”