Reminds me of Starship troopers.

Are you sure you want to have people with a low quality education who don't speak english properly as your army?

Oh, I forgot, we're talking about America where that's already the case. (runs) :p:rotfl:

The State Department pays for Blackwater and other Merc Companies, and labels there services as "Protection" and "Security"

Finacially having an America foreign legion would be great, All those "illegals" that join up will start paying income tax, which would flow in to the US Treasury, hahaha.

My coworkers always joke how we use the Brits and the Germans as out back up troops to fill the gaps in Iraq.
I love hearing stories from former Blackwater operators that tell me how they use to sit in an observation spot and "snipe" enemy combantants in Iraq, They dont go by the same Military laws as Our Soldiers do.

As far as saying that the Regular Army doesnt like having another Group, well they already have problems with the National Guard. My roommate in college who was a E-4 in the National Guard couldnt go to certain Army Schools because he was in the National Guard. Thats one reason y i didnt want to join the Guard cause they couldnt send me to the schools i wanted to go to.

Not even close.

Disregarding my silly comment, I still wouldn't think you'd want immigrants as a large force of your military. People want to enter the USA because of the higher standards of living, healthcare and education they would receive in comparison to their home country. While many i'm sure would be hard, honest working people, you can't just put a gun into their hands and send them to Iraq without spending a larger amount of money training them then you would training your average Yank.

A freebie paid for by the American taxpayer.

And Blackwater types are not subject to military law, and can kill with impunity.

If I was an Iraqi, I'd be making bombs, too.

Then you would have to do all the psychological profiling which would have to be up to standards - you could train them well but how their minds ticking is more important.

post deleted -- don't want to hijack the thread.

If 100 American "Foreign Legion" are killed in a firefight it will be universally considered as "100 American troops killed", by everyone, the media, the world, the government themselves as a FL would have to be created under Congresses power to raise and maintain armies and navys.

If I remember correctly, it's the taxpayers money that pay for the military and Blackwaters presence in Iraq.

If the legion would be modeled on the french foreign legion, I would only see benefits. The biggest atribute of the FFL is that the legionaires are more expendable than regular french soldiers, meaning french citizens. You rarley hear in the news when legionaires get KIA since they are not french citizens.

Mercenaries? Pft, you've already got the United States Armed Forces. They were just hired to invade and secure some oil wells in the Middle East by the oil industry in 2003:p. Think they're still on it, actually.

We are playing semantics.

Then you don't know America. We aren't French. The only benefit you see is expendability. That won't float here.

It's kinda interesting to me that this thread has come up this time of year because last year in September I had actually traveled to France to join the Legion Etrangere. So something of an anniversary for me, if you will.

I won't comment on whether or not I think the States should have a Foreign Legion, but I'll pipe in anyways because I think throwing the term "mercenary" around is a bit out of place from what I have seen. Don't take any of this as a general experience, but rather, it is a personal experience, and probably something of a confession.

To start, even though I was willing to enlist in the military of another country, I wouldn't call myself a mercenary, as to me this means being willing to kill your own countrymen for no other reason than profit. While these people certainly exist, I wouldn't say just because you're a foreigner in the military means that you're a mercenary.

To say a bit about myself, I had dropped out of high school at 16 y/o because of reasons that aren't necessary to detail. After ballooning up to 230-lb over a short period of time because of depression and carelessness, I cut my weight down to about 180-lb in six months through the old fashioned method of smoking too many cigarettes and eating too little food. Just after I dropped out, and before I fattened up, I had gone to the local Canadian Forces recruiting centre here in Toronto to get some information, but my "community commitment" at the time meant that I would have to wait six months until my probation was up, and by that time, the drugs had left my system and I had sobered up. That would have been mid-2002.

Time passed.

It would have been December 2004, I think, when it was one of those nights when I was wondering what I should do with my life, or more reasonably, what I COULD do--you know how those nights go. For whatever reason, the words "French Foreign Legion" shot through my mind, but I didn't think much else of it at the time. About a week later, there was a documentary on television, and I silently said to myself "that doesn't look TOO bad". So I began to do some research, seeing what was involved and all this, mostly out of curiosity. But the more I read about the Legion, the more interested I became, and the more I began to think that it was a possibility for me.

Beginning in January 2005, I began a more rigorous exercise schedule than I had at any other time in my life. I can still remember that first winter morning when I went out for a good run, and my legs burned for a week after. The chubby 180-pounder turned into a lean 150-pounder as I began running everyday in combination with all the pushups, situps, chinups, anything I could do to prepare myself.

When I say "prepare myself", to me that meant simply getting into some kind of decent shape to simply go to France, as I knew no matter how in-shape I was, my body would be punished.

Of course, we all know that there's lots of exercise in the military, and sometimes preparing yourself for the ****ty, unglorified jobs is the main obstacle. For me, that was no problem... I just had to get there.

By August 2006, things had developed in my life that basically told me the Legion was the ONLY thing to do. I had told myself many times that I could stop, but by that point in time, there was no stopping or turning back. The kid who was told most of his life that he was stupid, a criminal, and would wind up in jail, was going to France to join the Legion Etrangere and start taking an active role in making history, kicking ass, and simply showing himself that he COULD do it.

On 09SEP06, I was on that flight to Paris, and the next day, I humped it across the city to the receiving centre at Fort de Nogent and saw the gates, those as-seen-on-TV white arches with the men in Kepi Blancs nearby. I told them that I was there to join the Legion, and was taken in to do a quick IQ test. After waiting a bit, I was given a new identity.

After a week of salle de TV in Fort de Nogent, I was sent down to Aubagne where things would really begin. Of course, it doesn't really start until you're at Castle... and it doesn't REALLY start until you're with a regiment.

This post is probably long enough without going in to a lot of detail of what happened while I was there, as I could probably recount every single day, and tell you about most of the people I met.

To be honest, the people there were the faces of the world if the world was made up mostly of Frenchmen and Eastern Europeans. But seriously, they could be anybody you see on the street at any given time, in any given place. Most likely, they came because they felt something was wrong with their life and thought that the Legion could help.

Me? I spent three weeks there. Three weeks? Yep. After about a year and a half of psyching myself up, I decided to leave. During the down-time between tests and jobs, I thought back to those days when I was young, before I felt like life had kicked me in the ass. I was sitting on a log waiting, and realised what the problem was all along. The problem was myself.

For years I had wanted to take to the sky and burn tax-payers' money out through the turkey feathers, until the time when I was convinced that this was not possible for me. I had allowed myself to be convinced by people who held little interest in what I did with my life.

As I sat there, I said to myself the same thing I had said recently about the Legion... that I would regret it if I didn't atleast TRY. I needed to go back to Canada, get my high school diploma, get an engineering degree, join the Air Force, and become a pilot. Sure I was now five years older than I should be, but spending five years with the Legion would definitely rule out any possibilities. And I needed to know. I didn't want to look back at 40 years old and wonder what could have been. I wanted to know.

So I'm back now, and enrolled in accelerated adult school, with grades ranging from B- to A so far. Only eleven more credits to go for that diploma.

But what's the punchline of this post?

The bottom-line is escaping from your previous self and creating a new you.

This is what the Legion did for me even though I was only with them for three weeks. Combined with the year and a half of working towards it, a man was created who would try his damnedest to reach a goal, and wouldn't let anybody tell him that it was pointless or that he couldn't do it.

I expected nothing from the Legion because YOU go to THEM... it's not the other way around. They don't have to accept you, and if you give them an excuse, they're not going to. The French Foreign Legion does not take everyone who shows up, and they don't need to; I've heard that ten thousand a year arrive, and a thousand are accepted to the inner fold, but I don't know how accurate the numbers are. We can joke about the people who go there, write them off as simple killers, terrorists, thieves, criminals, drug and gun runners, and whatever other dregs of society you imagine, but to me it's not that simple.

What I can tell you is that for all the negative things you've heard about the French Foreign Legion, it was the most positive experience in my life and has changed me for what I enjoy imagining is the better. I was treated as an actual person for once in a long time, with some respect as long as I held up my end of the bargain and carried my own weight. I was treated better in three weeks by people who most consider mercenaries, than by my own countrymen for the good part of two decades.

That should probably be it for my confession, and you'll have to forgive me for this long post, but I feel it is unjust to label anybody who is in a foreign army as a "mercenary" or as generic "bad men". Sure, some people want money, and it'll be hard-earned citizenship, but not all of those who go are mercenaries. Armies made up of foreigners have a stigma because you will have no desire to join them if everything is okay in your life. I'm not saying my life has been the hardest of them all, nor am I saying that you've had it any easier. We all have something that isn't satisfactory, something to prove to ourselves:

For some the answer is the military, for a smaller group, the answer is the Foreign Legion.

[quote=bradclark1]That's my personal opinion, I can not talk for American citizens.

@Sockeye
Interesting story mate, I also almost joined the FFL once...:-?

@Sockeye,
My hat is off to you and I mean that sincerely. I won't offer you good luck because you won't need it. You'll succeed.

Brad

Lost for words. That was a good read. Seems to me you came out wiser. With that attitude you can do anything. :up: