Hardest of the Hardcore

“The Hardest of the Hardcore,” certainly opens the eyes of anyone who reads it and isn’t aware of the current situation in Iraq with the US government contracting out military jobs to private civilians. The writer, student Dylan Fujitani, does a great job of persuading, at least myself, that this is a real problem. These ‘mercenaries,’ the he calls them, are terrible for several reasons including that they don’t have to answer to anyone. Their only potential repercussions for misconduct are financial. He gives numerous reasons why these hired guns are bad for the country, the government, and our mission in Iraq. One major problem I see with his entire argument is he is painting with too broad a brush. Fujitani is basically accusing every civilian contractor in battle of being a rogue ‘cowboy’ out to do harm to the people of Iraq. Apparently they do this only because either they were discharged from the military before or simply seek monetary gains by playing shoot-em-up with innocent people. Every civilian contractor in battle is a blood-thirsty, money hungry cavalier with a shady past according to Fujitani. He pays almost no attention to the good they may doing in Iraq or possibly their necessity or the fact that they may actually be good people. I for one have a little more, potentially misplaced but still steadfast, confidence in the intention in Iraq and the heart of the men fighting there.