Today's SWJ OPED Round Up and Yesterday's OPED Roundup both had some of the recent commentary. The United States will have to grow (considerably - perhaps more then planned) its tools of foreign policy - the Military, the Foreign Service, CIA, Justice, and the Inter-Agency etc. if it wants the flexibility to meet its commitments without filling the holes and cracks with PMCs - the PMCs saw the hole we (America) created and filled it.

We created our reliance on PMCs - this is a self-inflicted GSW. There should be no surprises that contracting out the nation's interests can result in consequences other then we had intended. When you put on the uniform you are different, and when you take it off you are different. Being asked to employ violence while in uniform means excepting the responsibilities and the strengths of the convictions and values the uniform represents - the straight jacket is the UCMJ, and unit loyalty. Taking off the uniform and taking on personal risk and doing violence for a paycheck is different - I don't know if there is a better illustration then that.

To me, the question is where do we go from here? I'd also add that even if we decide to fill our own holes - a process that a few years at the very minimum to fix (in a perfect world), goes beyond recruiting - toward competition with the PMCs to retain some of our best trained mid level folks, and to some degree relies on the political leadership to authorize, fund and equip the increase in manpower, and relies on the American public to volunteer on a much larger scale for service.

Even so - PMCs will probably still be seen on the battlefield. They have made their value on the world market known - and there are others who will contract their services.