Alt-QAnon: 100% of Wars Are Started by WRAITHs and 75% of Them Are Fought By Mercenaries

You might dispute the title - didn't Hitler start World War II?  Didn't Caesar cross the Rubicon?  Didn't Alexander the Great attack Persia, India, Egypt, and the rest?

The answer is "no."  While it is true that in each case, an individual human being made the decision to start the war, in each case, it was the military that took the actual concrete steps of starting the war.  Thus, Hitler didn't invade Poland; he was in Berlin.  What invaded Poland then?  The German military machine.

No single human being can start, much less carry out, a war.  War is a creation of WRAITHs and is their domain, which is what makes war so terrifying.  

A moment's reflection makes it clear that a nation's military is just the kind of WRAITH that Alt-QAnon is talking about.  Any given member of the WRAITH may die -- and many do -- but the hive persists, and existing members and/or new recruits step in to fill the slots vacated by the dead.  While strategic and tactical decisions are made by leaders up and down the ranks from the sergeants to the generals, that's no different than a corporation, whose decisions are made by middle managers and CEOs.  A military is perhaps an even better example of a superorganism than is a corporation, since its members are have even less autonomy than workers in a corporation.  While at war, a soldier works for the army 24-7, in a specialized role, and is constantly subject to being sacrificed for the good of the greater whole, just like a constituent of a superorganism in nature.

And like other WRAITHs, a military organization is programmed to survive and thrive, and will take every opportunity to expand.  It's not just the defense contractors (classic WRAITHs); it's also the generals who argue for ever increasing defense budgets.  And in the right conditions, a country's military will take over the country in a military coup, regardless of exactly who the military's leadership is.

So what should we make of the fact that wars are being fought by mercenaries?  

It's hard to say.   A nationalistic army comprising the flower of a country's youth, stirred to a killing frenzy by appeals to patriotism or worse is terrifying enough; perhaps even more terrifying than a mercenary army. 

But there is something understandable about a national army.  A nation has to be prepared to defend itself against other nations, and even the most peace-loving nations therefore have armies.

Moving to the second half of the title, that's from today's New York Times, which quotes human rights consultant Varvara Pakhomenko as saying that about three quarters of all wars today are fought by mercenaries and other "non-state combatants," rather than by members of nations' armed forces.

The idea of mercenaries is nothing new.   As Machiavelli explained, compared to one's own army,

Mercenary and auxiliary troops are useless and dangerous. Mercenaries are “disunited, undisciplined, ambitious, and faithless.” Because their only motivation is monetary, they are generally not effective in battle and have low morale. Mercenary commanders are either skilled or unskilled. Unskilled commanders are worthless, but skilled commanders cannot be trusted to suppress their own ambition. It is far more preferable for a prince to command his own army.

But in this day and age, unless you control a nation state, if you want an army, you need to get a mercenary one.  That was the problem facing Russian oligarch Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who surmounted it by financing Wagner, an ultra-violent mercenary force carrying out operations in Syria.  Recently, four members Wagner filmed themselves torturing, murdering, and dismembering a quite possibly innocent man, and the New York Times is quick to point out the parallel to the Nisour Square shootings carried out by U.S.'s mercenaries -- Blackwater -- in 2007, and the recent pardons of those involved by Donald Trump.

So to tie it back to Alt-QAnon -- the NY Times article says:

It is not clear why they recorded the killing, but analysts said it might have been for propaganda reasons or as a horrific form of advertising.

What better way for a WRAITH mercenary force to drum up business -- to satisfy its drive to survive and thrive -- than to advertise this way?  Unlike nationalistic forces, mercenaries do not feel the pressure to end the war so that the army can go home.  Mercenary armies just want more wars, and may well be using the current one to advertise their services for the next one.