12/29/2002 12:16:00 AM

Given that Computer Associates now has its own private corporate army it seems a micro-trend in war might be toward publicly traded, sanitized, corporate mercenary armies. That would be interesting, no? The mob has done it on a local crime syndicate level so why not CA in support of a global Western hegemony?

My question is this, "What happens when CA decides that it will become an 'outsource partner' to the Sudanese government or to the despotic regime in Guinea, West Africa?" There are no international norms for the decision making process that a corporate entity should use in screening potential war "clients." Any country without UN or US sanctions against it could be a client of these secret, corporate mercenary armies if they had enough money.

This leads me to say something in the extreme that is both laughable and ominous. It may be that this recent move toward monetizing the practice of war, in line with our somewhat longer practice of doing the same with the commodities of war, is the end of the civilized society we have grown accustomed to.

That is a little extreme, eh Dan? Perhaps, but there is some sparkle of truth in this broad brush analysis is there not? Yes, there have been mercenary armies from the dawn of time, and these armies did loot and pillage and generally act as roving bands of hired thugs. And, yes, there were exceptions among some of the honorable companies of national mercenaries such as the French Foreign Legion. The difference in the cases such as CA/DynCorp is the legitimation of the thuggery. The revenue from this warmongering goes directly into large, well established public companies, and these war-profits contribute to the value of the underlying public security. To me this seems nearly the equivalent of wartime pillaging and money laundering. If you own CA, or if any of the mutual funds you are invest in does, you are now party to the wars CA involves itself with. Think about that. These profits come at the expense of the lives of the world's children, the human rights of the most vulnerable and, potentially, the national sovereignty of the states in whose borders these free market militias "work."

But these consultants are just for peace keeping and protection, Dan! Really? Tell that to the American missionaries whose plane was shot down in South America thanks to Computer Associates' fully owned subsidiary DynCorp. Tell that to the countless child sex slaves that were kept and trafficked by American free market "consultants" in the Balkans. War is bad business and should never be mixed with big business. That is my silly utopian phase of the day.

I say we start the long march toward de-monetizing war. The practice and tools of war need not be the basis upon which any company grows revenue. The free market CANNOT regulate itself. We know this. This is why we have trade law and government commissions. It is time to take a serious look at the war profiteering that is taking place--especially by those nations who so self-righteously presume to pass political and military judgment on regimes they have sold weapons to and supported in the not so distance past.