The Real Definition of Mercenary

As you've probably heard, there's been a blog firestorm recently regarding the comments of William Arkin in the Washington Post where he referred to our troops as mercenaries and claimed in essence that they owe us, the American people rather than the other way round. Thanks, Mr. Arkin, for insulting my two grandfathers, my father, brother, cousin, and my cousin's husband.

As disgusting as his comments were (and his subsequent behavior when challenged on The O'Reilly Factor), I'm more annoyed at his misuse of the word mercenary. This seems to be a common problem among the anti-war left, e.g. Daily Kossacks. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

If you look up mercenary in the Webster dictionary it says "adj. working or done for payment only or n. a soldier hired to serve in a foreign army." Now since our soldiers (and civilian contractors) serve in the American Armed forces not a foreign army, the lefties must mean work done for payment only. Gee, they must all be mind readers to assume that every American soldier is in it for the dough. I mean they get paid so much money--so what if they risk life and limb and are separated from their families for many months. $Show me the money, baby!$ It's not possible that they might feel a patriotic duty to serve their country.

Or maybe they're referring to the volunteers that enlist just for the college money with no expectation of ever having to serve in combat with their comrades--just like their little darling Lt. Ehren Watada. Who is the mercenary now?

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a great post on some American heroes that were KIA in Iraq.