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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, if I was a local civilian, and someone is doing terrible things to me and my people, I don't think I cared too much about whether the people terrorising us is a mercenary or "a regular soldier" deployed by a country. There are examples of both soldiers and mercenaries getting away with horrible stuff. In the end both would leave me disgusted with both the people committing these crimes and their origin country.

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Thing is, the soldier has a doctrine and there are rules governing just about everything. Especially if we’re talking NATO. The mercenary is by far worse because there aren’t any rules or authority to appeal to, it’s just some guy with weapons getting paid under the table and not giving a fuck. The mercenary also definitely feels less safe, less confident, so most likely more jumpy, more trigger-happy. And worst of all probably ex-military so fully skilled.

A more realistic answer is: To be honest, if I was a local civilian, and someone is doing terrible things to me and my people, I don't think I cared too much about whether the people terrorizing us is a mercenary or "a regular soldier" deployed by a country. I want my own "a regular solider" or mercenary to do worse to the other side.

Tangential, but this reminds me of the US practice of having military (SOF) personnel temporarily terminate their military term, sign a new contract for the three-letter-agency of choice, execute a clandestine operation, then reverse the prior steps to walk right back into the military as if nothing ever happened.

Statecraft is so strange in this way, that you or I as laymen will ask just what in the fuck is the point - but it's totally legitimate and not casus belli for our solider to magically become a spy for a day to execute an operation on another nation.

This is indeed a thing.

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