"The Hardest of the Hardcore": Let's Outlaw Hired Guns

Dylan Fujitani's essay on "The Hardest of the Hardcore": Let's Outlaw Hired Guns in Contemporary American Warfare is about a topic I have commonly heard about. Mercenaries being used by the U.S. Forces. I found this article intriguing because it doesn't really show the counter arguments about why we have mercenaries. Groups such as Black water exist because the U.S. Army is strictly volunteer and "volunteer" is basically what they are doing. The paycheck is definitely not large for military forces so people do resort to outside incomes. A show I watched a while ago called "Jericho" would be a good example of the use of mercenaries. Basically there are not enough National Guard to reunite the country so they start hiring out. The group takes advantage of it and starts pillaging everything. Mercenaries are common grounds on all levels of international politics. It can be used to avoid Congress completely if they know the mission will not come to fruition. This article puts into context an outstanding view of what the extremist mercenaries are but fails to take into account how many that are not of the extremist nature. They do their jobs to do the best of their ability. His article nearly put me to sleep because of his number of reasons and the similarity amongst them. Most of the paper he is merely saying they exist so I'm guessing his audience is aimed at people that do not know about mercenaries. But for me at least, 60% of this paper just draws me a slight shutting of the eyes.