Last week Bill O’Reilly decided he knew why we haven’t erased Islamic extremism from the world. In what he dubbed, “a great idea” O’Reilly stated that instead of the U.S. “protecting” everyone there should be a force of 25,000 mercenaries who will be trained by U.S. special forces and NATO troops to be a global police force.

Now there have been many who already have spoken out against O’Reilly’s remarks, most have circulated Stephen Colbert’s response and O’Reilly’s counter attack. Comedy aside, looking at O’Reilly’s plan and the fact that some people truly believe it’s a good idea is worrying. It makes us wonder if here in the U.S. we have forgotten the words of George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. This ideas of a mercenary force are without a doubt made without deep research and taking into account many factors.

Whatever picture Bill O’Reilly has in his head, which is most likely of an A-Team style force running around the world righting wrongs, is impossible and illogical. At one point he said, “if you don’t pay you don’t get protection”. It’s good to know complicated global issues have been solved with a basic wise guy business model. Not to mention the possible awkward moments of two protection paying countries going to war. I would love to here the breakdown of that idea.

O’Reilly was not specifc as to whether or not this 25,000 strong force would be made up of all fighters or if it would include logistics as well. Although it can be certain that they would need many things such as, supply convoys, fuel, food, housing, waste management, construction teams, communications buildings, diplomatic teams, internal police forces, etc. To think that a force of 25,000 could walk into Syria and Iraq, defeat the Islamic State, and go home without repercussions is to spit in the face of the last decade.

It truly seems as though O’Reilly cannot remember the past. Let us not forget that in Iraq there were at least 100,000 contractors. Not all of those were military contractors used to fight either, more likely than not most of them were there to aid in reconstruction projects. So really what they were used for was fixing a broken country. Depending on who you ask, they weren’t able to accomplish that goal. So for O’Reilly to think his global force that is a quarter of the size of those working in Iraq could fix incredibly complicated issues such as the Syrian Civil War, Iraqi inter-religious fighting, and the Islamic State is a joke. A terrible one at that.