is this one of those times i am seldom correct?
i'm afraid i'll have to answer with a resounding NO. that blind partisanship you are so quick to accuse me of seems to be a sin you are quite guilty of. as is par for the course with the statists of modern liberalism, you mix all corporations into one bag, all wars into another, then mix and match to suit your chosen argument. how often i've seen this same scenario played out i simply can't even number.
do some corporations profit from the wars we wage? of course they do. for some, the technology of war is their bread and butter and profit is, after all, the name of the game when conducting business. for others, the change in political climate caused by a military conflict is more conducive to their operations. to baldly claim that they have started such a conflict simply for the sake of profit is the sort of accusation that demands more proof than the "maybes" of conspiracy fanatics. that the corruption existing in our government might allow the unscrupulous to commit such deeds is yet another strike against your chosen philosophy.
the causes of our wars and the incompetence of those who dole out military contacts are different matters entirely. to simply lump all wars into one category in order to dismiss them is worse than disingenuous. afghanistan, a war of retribution, might be seen as an almost ethical incursion. the punishment of a regime that harbors those who committed heinous acts against our civilian population is one of the better reasons to commit the atrocity that is war. actions such as those in iraq and libya are of an entirely different order. both were engaged in for the express purpose of ousting regimes deemed abusive to their own people and dangerous to the rest of the world. as the self-styled global watchdog of democracy, we have often seen fit to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries for much the same reasons and i've never make any effort to disguise my disgust over this policy.
as to the ludicrous nature of our government's contract skills, this is still another strike against the institutionalized ineptitude of our federal bureaucracy. having negotiated more than a few contracts over the course of my various careers, i am constantly amazed at the incompetence shown at nearly every level in this matter. there is simply no consistency. in one instance a contract will be handed out to an unqualified bidder, merely because they have low-balled their price and left it open to increases to make up the difference. in the next they will offer the contractor the moon because it is something our government believes it just can't do without. no project ever comes in at the originally quoted price and, because someone else (the taxpayer) is footing the bill, no one ever thinks to complain. the military is far from the only segment of government guilty of this idiocy. the sheer magnitude of the contracts they oversee and the destructive nature of their purview merely makes them the most obvious target of our scorn. who do you wish to blame for this fiasco? would any responsible businessman pass up the opportunity to pad their bottom line a bit at the expense of one of the world's most abusive institutions?
