Some really good points Eliza. As you may have gathered, I'm a pacifist myself, though not of the absolute kind (inasmuch as I believe in the right to appropriate degrees of self-defense) and as such I'm deeply cynical of the machinery of war, particularly the glorification of both of it and those who willingly participate in and perpetuate it. Yet I too would not wish to condemn the genuinely deeply impoverished, traumasised/brutalised and vulnerable for doing some terrible things. The kinds of mercenaries of which you speak, are arguably just as much victims of war themselves, as are those they harm.