The Free Market for War: How I Almost Became a Mercenary

By Ali Hassan Massoud

In 2002, life was not going well for me. I was making decent money selling agricultural chemicals but the collateral damage from the job was hurting me badly in other ways.

Yeah, I was making excellent money, but the travel kept me on the road much more than I wanted or expected. I was on the road because my sales territory was southern Michigan, plus northern Ohio and Indiana. Driving all day, eating junk food from drive-up windows, and swilling pot after pot of nasty gas station coffee was ruining my health. Missing time with my young family wasn’t good for my spirit or soul either. Never mind what it did for my love life. So I had to get out.

Step one was talking to a friend of mine who was a personnel manager at headhunter concern in Cleveland. She specialized in engineers and related hires, so she couldn’t hook me up herself, but she interviewed me and then provided me with a professional quality resume and cover letter that most people would have to pay for, free. She said to post it on Monster.com and HotJobs.com and a few others and sit back and see what happened. And the rest is the story of what did.

I won’t go into all of the job offers, BS, and come-ons that I received. Suffice to say that the jobs I was offered either didn’t suit me, or I didn’t suit some of the potential employers. But I wasn’t desperate yet, because I still had a job.

One day, I received an email from a company in Reston, Virginia called Dyncorp. They were seriously interested in me, if I was willing to contract out for a year’s employment in the Middle East.

I responded to the email with a reply that included my phone number. The recruiter that called me back was enthusiastic and accommodating. They would be interviewing in Chicago soon, and did I need a hotel or travel money to be there for one? Cool, eh? So I set it up and confirmed my interview date.

From the way Dyncorp was proceeding it was looking real good. I had everything they said made for the ideal candidate. I was in good health. Being of Arab descent I know the culture, religion, and some of the language. Having served in Kuwait with the US Army a few years before, I was familiar with the geography and climate.

At the motel the night before my interview I booted up the laptop and searched the Internet for what I could find out about my prospective employer. They didn’t seem that bad. At first anyway.

“DynCorp”, said one source I found, “began in 1946 as a project of a small group of returning World War II pilots seeking to use their military contacts to make a living in the air cargo business. Named California Eastern Airways the original company was soon airlifting supplies to Asia used in the Korean War. By 2002 Dyncorp, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, was the nation's 13th largest military contractor with $2.3 billion in revenue until it merged with Computer Sciences Corporation, an El Segundo, California-based technology services company, in an acquisition worth nearly $1 billion.”

That wasn’t the half of it either. The Pentagon, under pressure to get lean and mean in the post-Cold War years has privatized or out-sourced more and more sensitive but seemingly vital missions to these private security/defense contractors. In Dyncorp’s case, by 2002, it was the nation's 13th largest military contractor with $2.3 billion in revenue until it merged with Computer Sciences Corporation, an El Segundo, California-based technology services company, in an acquisition worth nearly $1 billion.

Already armed DynCorp employees make up the core of the police force in Bosnia. DynCorp troops protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai, while DynCorp planes and pilots fly the defoliation missions over the coca crops in Colombia. Back home in the United States Dyncorp is in charge of the border posts between the US and Mexico, many of the Pentagon's weapons-testing ranges, and the entire Air Force One fleet of presidential planes and helicopters. The company also reviews security clearance applications of military and civilian personnel for the Navy.

It has become such a haven for retired and former military personnel from all over the world that Soldier of Fortune magazine once featured Dyncorp on its cover.

Sitting back at the motel, taking all this in left me feeling the need to question what the job they had in mind for me was exactly. I went out to get dinner and when I came back Dyncorp had left a message for me. Report to such and such an office building for a blood, urine, and HIV test. Oh, and a wear casual clothes because later we’ll be taking you to the range to “qualify “ with the M-16 rifle, the 9mm pistol, and “a few others” so we can vouch for your competency, and that’ll all be followed by a PT (physical training) test. You did bring running shoes, sweats, and a towel along, didn’t you? Shower facilities will be provided afterward.

M-16s! What the hell is this “job” they have in mind? In order to receive my payment for travel and lodging I had to go, and so I went.

The upshot of this whole affair was that they were willing to hire me as a “Mobile Security Team Leader” at $45K, plus health, dental, and a $500k life & disability insurance policy. One month on duty, then two weeks off. And I fly back and forth on their tab. I had to sign a one-year contract as well as follow a rather extensive list of dos and don’ts that Kuwaiti’s find offensive or rude. As a sweetener I was offered a $2500 signing bonus if I came on board within 24 hours. No two weeks notice to my current employer, though. More like 10 days. Such a deal.

All I had to do was supervise a Dyncorp security team of 20 people as military equipment was unloaded from container ships, safeguard it at the warehouse, and finally escort the convoy that shipped it out to forward positioned military sites around Kuwait and Qatar.

There is something at once exciting and yet repellent about the prospect of doing work like this. It is repellent because of the moral taint it has. If the cargo were humanitarian aid, bodyguarding for Doctors without Borders, or simply providing security for a construction site, I’d have prolly taken the job.

It seems the wealthy oil-rich emirates along the edge of the Persian Gulf aren’t able to raise enough interest or loyalty from their own people to do this kind of work. So they turn to Dyncorp who then in turn hire people like me. Well, not this time brother. I took their voucher, cashed it, and immediately headed to the airport. Thanks, but no thanks, you merchants of death. I sent them an email declining their offer of employment. I’ll sell anti-fungals, eat at Burger King, and drive myself into a stupor all over the Midwest a little longer, if it means an honest living where nobody gets killed except weevils and fungi.

Dyncorp sent me an email asking me to reconsider or apply again. “We’ll always have a job available for men like you Mr. Massoud”, I was told.

“No, you won’t”, I thought to myself. I don’t fancy myself some kind of moral hero of Gandhi-like proportions, but I know right from wrong. The money involved is irrelevant.

I read some time later of a continuing news event involving Dyncorp. Dyncorp personnel were implicated in a prostitution and child porn scandal while involved in managing Army and UN contracts in Bosnia. None were criminally prosecuted, but Dyncorp was relieved of their contract by the Pentagon and suffered withering criticism by the Army’s CID who investigated accusations against them. So afterward Dyncorp merged with another security/defense contractor and adopted their name to become the Computer Sciences Corporation.

The sprawling, voracious, military-industrial complex has constituted anything but private free enterprise from its very inception during the Cold War years. In this giant muck pit of warmongering, waste, and misdeeds not only bordering on, but also often entering deeply into criminal conduct, no consumer-determined bottom line has dictated which firms would survive and which would go bankrupt. Continual government bailouts have been the order of the day. The great arms firms have managed to pass off much of the normal risk of doing business in a genuine market, passing on many of their inflated costs to the taxpayers while still realizing extraordinary rates of return on investment.

Meanwhile, high taxes to support the military-industrial complex have punished all those attempting to operate businesses in the actual free market. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute said this about the role of private firms that do the state’s dirty work:

“This economic mess been the worst aspect of the operation of the military contracting business. Far more malign has been the role these semi-socialized firms have played as powerful insiders in the making of strategic and foreign policy, constantly exerting strong direct and indirect pressures to maintain America's imperial posture in the world, to keep up the quick pace of the arms race, and to increase the already enormous bulk of the defense budget. Working for peace, not to speak of free enterprise, has never been their profession, as anyone attending their trade-association conferences or reading their advertisements in defense-industry magazines can easily attest.”

So should we continue down the path of empire, with huge standing armies, foreign wars and occupations, and the parasites that feed off of them? Not just no, but hell no

Ali H. Massoud is a father, political theorist, apostate Muslim, small business owner, college graduate, crack rifle marksman, cat lover, shrewd investor, US Army veteran, and currently single. He lives in Michigan. Send him email at chemical_ali_massoud@hotmail.com or visit his personal website at http://www.geocities.com/chemical_ali_massoud/FAQ.html.