A Post article today, Bounties a Bust in Hunt for Al-Qaeda:
Jaber Elbaneh is one of the world’s most-wanted terrorism suspects. In 2003, the U.S. government indicted him, posted a $5 million reward for his capture and distributed posters bearing photos of him around the globe. None of it worked. Elbaneh remains at large, as wanted as ever. …
Since 1984, the program has handed out $77 million to more than 50 tipsters, according to the State Department. … In 2004, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) visited Pakistan to assess why Rewards for Justice had generated so little information regarding al-Qaeda’s leadership. He discovered that the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad had effectively shut down the program. There was no radio or television advertising. …
In 2004, Congress passed a law authorizing the State Department to post rewards as high as $50 million apiece — a provision with bin Laden in mind. Last fall, Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) went further, introducing a bill that would raise the cap to $500 million. The State Department has declined to boost the reward for bin Laden, arguing that more money was unlikely to do any good and would only add to his notoriety.
Let’s see, billions spent via ordinary means, and millions offered in bounties, and it is the bounties they blame for Al-Qaeda’s notoriety and elusive leaders? The billions are spent and gone, while the millions in bounties we only lose when they actually work. How does this suggest we should prefer ordinary means to bounties? Perhaps this Post comment explains the real objection:
This "price in his head", millions in rewards business has had a stench to it all along. It’s evidence of our own raw materialism and reinforces the idea it’s our enemies who occupy the moral high ground.
Perhaps another step beyond John David Galt:
One of the things that caused the fall of the roman empire was when mercenary armies(and non-mercenary armies that had learned from direct exposure to the culture of successful mercenaries) got powerful enough to be allowed to cross the rubicon and to come back and rule civil society.
Bounties are just one more way to enrich mercenaries and one more way of bringing this eventuality closer. Mercenaries destabilize global peace, yes, but they also pose a direct risk to democracy, just as great if not greater than islamic terrorists.
Around this particular time in the history of the US, Blackwater was raking in quite the dough, and it came with its own navy, intelligence agency, air force, and ground forces, and they were pushing for more. They could certainly have soaked up that bounty budget, just as Robin predicts, with initially successful outcomes -- the firms get involved once the bounties are high enough to justify their participation. But in this case, the firm does not necessarily have to stop - - it can go for the big prize, overthrowing of the government, if it's big enough. Payment of bounties quickly becomes a non-consensual tribute. With the monopoly of violence goes the choice to no longer be a people ruled by law, or democracy. That choice begins to be in the hands of those who control the means of violence.
Even if the mercenary armies do not go this far, they can create quite a mess, as the Mercenary War of 240 BC – 238 BC shows, with the resulting psychological trauma involved. War and violence is a terrible thing, and paying for more of it does tend to beget more of it in non-linear ways.
Bribing also has the stench of raw materialism. What do you think about speculation that bribing ethnic/regional/tribal leaders may have been more responsible for recent Iraq successes than the troop surge?