From the Persian Gulf to the Gulf Coast, private security contractors – that is, mercenaries – are out in force.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security has outsourced another sector of America’s embattled economy: security detail. With the National Guard bogged down in Iraq, the government hired a number of paramilitary firms to roam the streets of New Orleans armed with machine guns and deputized to use lethal force.

According to the Washington Post, Blackwater USA has around 150 mercenaries in the Gulf Coast region; British-based ArmorGroup International has around 50 employees there, some of them hired by wealthy New Orleans residents to guard against looters. Additionally, The Nation reports security firms Intercon, American Security Group, Wackenhut and the awesomely-named Instinctive Shooting International are also in New Orleans performing security operations.

Blackwater USA, you might remember, was the company whose four employees were killed by insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq in March 2004. The incident shed light on the growing presence of private military contractors who perform not only support services for the U.S. armed forces, but also engage the enemy.

So what does it mean when those military contractors take up guns on American soil?

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the federal government from using soldiers as law enforcement.

The reasons for this seem clear: Civilian policing is not a military job.

Consider law enforcement officers are themselves civilians; they often live in the communities they serve. They are known and accountable to their neighbors. Most importantly, police officers are trained to arrest under the presumption of innocence.

By contrast, the military is trained to kill a designated enemy. This crucial difference is why Posse Comitatus is still in effect, and why the use of these private mercenaries is a shady end-run around the law.

While many people serve in the armed forces out of a sense of duty, honor and love-of-country, the men employed by these private security firms do it for the money.

The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill reported mercenaries in New Orleans complained about receiving “only” $350 per day in addition to an unspecified per diem.

Such a sum of money might seem like nothing to these contractors, but when one adds up the cost to the government of hiring extra security to do the job our National Guard would normally do, the burden becomes troublesome.

But don’t tell that to billionaire Erik Prince or Gary Jackson, Blackwater USA founders and political allies of the Republican Party. When one considers Prince’s close ties with the first President Bush, along with the second Bush administration’s penchant for cronyism, it should come as no surprise the Department of Homeland Security has hired Blackwater.

Because these “civilian contractors” are often not subject to the same high standards of behavior as our police or armed forces, some of them run afoul of the law. In 1999 DynCorp, one of the companies in New Orleans, ran a sex slave ring in Bosnia while under contract with the U.S. military. When company employee Ben Johnston blew the whistle on the operation, the company fired him in an attempt to cover it up.

These are probably not people we should be giving machine guns to with carte-blanche to enforce the law as they see fit.

The presence of mercenaries in New Orleans represents the ultimate failure of starve-the-government conservative philosophy. By cutting funding for emergency preparedness before Hurricane Katrina and funneling money to private military contractors afterwards, they have engendered a situation that has turned one of America’s oldest and culturally-vibrant cities into a war zone patrolled by soldiers of fortune.

It’s overkill, and a grim vision of the future if we continue to abdicate trusted and vital government functions to those with the money to pay for the most guns.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.