I've always wondered why mercs don't get used in places like Darfur and Rwanda, you know, places that have no strategic interest to the great powers. Why shouldn't we pay some enterprising fellows to go in and sort things out?

A woman I worked with was kvetching about our behavior during the Rwandan genocide. I asked her, "Look at Orlando over there. Would you be okay seeing him killed, maybe tortured to death to stop that from happening?"

"No," she said.

"Are there any young men in here you'd be okay having die to stop the genocide? Because that's what it would take. Our young men and women on the ground, and you can bet some of them would die horribly."

"No," she repeated.

"And that's the problem," I said. "We don't like to see these horrible things happen, but we don't want top sacrifice our sons and daughters to stop them."

And that got me thinking -- why not mercs? I know they make governments nervous, but they would probably be 1,000 times more efficient than anything the U.N. could put together.

Thoughts?