I can't help but wonder if the use of private contractors will become a way to overcome the asymetry of the current kind of war. Non state actors enjoy certain advantages over states. Perhaps non state actors can be designed to counter the likes of Al Q and Hez. What is not legal for the US or any state to do may be legal for a properly set up company to do. Where there is a will there is a way.

Great article, Chester! Holy Bobbitt! Does this sound like a market-state military or what? I hope it works better for us now than those zany Hessians did for the Redcoats in the Revolution!

Slightly off topic, but not by much:

You are asking whether you should go to law school. I think you are exactly the kind of person that the legal profession needs (even if it doesn't want): Someone who has been out in the real world, who understands that what is law is not always reality (and vice versa), someone who can think through the consequences of a new law or a legal decision, and is unafraid to go against a P.C. grain that turns the rule of law into a golden calf, completely discounts the need for law to be enforced, sometimes even by violence, and remains blissfully unaware of the perverse incentives and real-world problems that they create.

Hell, with your resume, the clarity of your writing and the right LSAT scores, you could easily go far - I'm talking Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, George Washington, Stanford, Chicago, Virginia, Duke, UNC... just about anywhere you want. And after law school, would that folks in the CIA, FBI, DoD, State Department, Justice, DHS, etc. have the benefits of such clear thinking.

We need ya, buddy.

On the subject of private contractors, Allen Pinkerton led a Detective agency, Provided security for the railroads. Hired to provide security for Soon to be President Lincoln, He stopped an assasination attempt on Lincoln on his was to the 1861 inauguration.
Ref - (WWW.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)

The piece is good and does sound like something Bobbit would approve of.

Yes, yes, I recognize that the Brave New World of the market state is here, and there's nothing we can do about it, and we'd best get used to it, and learn how to work with them; but that doesn't mean I like it so much. I suppose I'm, in terms of political thought at least, too much of a creature of the era of nation states.