Who would this viceroy be? Probably Prince had himself in mind, and that should worry everyone. Under his watch, Blackwater military contractors opened fire in a city square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians in one of the worst episodes of the Iraq war. When asked by Congress how he addressed potential wrongdoing among his employees in 2007, he said: “If there is any sort of … problem, whether it's bad attitude, a dirty weapon, riding someone's bike that's not his, we fire him. … If they don't hold to the standard, they have one decision to make: window or aisle.”

Prince has been developing these ideas for a while. In his Journal op-ed, he wrote that the British East India Company should be the model for U.S. operations in Afghanistan. This private company was the instrument of British colonization of India for centuries, led by a viceroy with monarchical powers and a private army to rule the natives. Prince’s solution for Afghanistan amounts to neo-colonialism.

There are other problems with Prince’s proposal. MacArthur was fired by President Harry Truman for abuse of power—hardly a venerable model for a viceroy. Also, the armies of the British East India Company did much harm in India, and bankrupted the company. British taxpayers had to bail it out in 1770, and then the government had to seize control in 1874.

For Prince, a large mercenary force inspired by the British East India Company would be Blackwater 2.0, a phenomenal business opportunity for someone with White House connections. (His sister is Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education.) But he’s also got inroads of his own. In January, he held secret meetings in the Seychelles, allegedly to establish a back channel between Trump and Vladimir Putin (a spokesman for Prince denied to the Post that the meeting had anything to with Trump). Or perhaps he just wants to come home. After the Iraq fiasco, he went into self-exile, helping Abu Dhabi raise a secret army in the desert and working for China in Africa.

Despite the ridiculousness of all this, the idea appears to be gaining traction in Washington. Bannon recently went to the Pentagon to push for it, and others in the private military industry are lobbying in support. Their interests are more likely profit than concern for Afghans. The fact that the idea has champions in the West Wing sends a message to the whole galaxy of private military contractors: Business may be booming once again! If America entertains the possibility of outsourcing one of its most intractable foreign policy boondoggles, it may well push the market to spit out huge numbers of these fighters. It is supply and demand, generating tens of thousands of soldiers of fortune.

One might think these are different times—that the abuses of the British East India Company are irrelevant to the current age. That would be wrong.