blackwater blackguards

Apropos the presence of security contractors in Iraq, these two short poems from WWI. First, A. E. Housman's "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries":

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

Now, in response, Hugh MacDiarmid's "Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries":

It is a God-damned lie to say that these
Saved, or knew, anything worth any man's pride.
They were professional murderers and they took
Their blood money and impious risks and died.
In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With difficulty persist here and there on earth.

What are we to make of the privatization of combat? The fact that our government is not sure how many hired guns are running around Iraq, "somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000," none of these subject to Iraqi justice (a tip o' the hat to Paul Bremer) or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A law unto themselves.