Mercenaries

"Mercenaries"

Greyhawk has a piece on Hillary Clinton's Mercenary Army. As to which, I always think of the poem by A. E. Housman.

Epitaph on Army of Mercenaries (1914)
THESE, in the day when heaven was falling
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

That Iraq has been abandoned by God, I would not defend; but perhaps he has made provisions we might not have expected.