Where Do They Come Up With This?
I've been away visiting my broter at his yeshiva this weekend with my parents, and I come home to this short email:
Come on Elliot!? What's wrong with that? No country on this planet should possess the kinds of weapons that the USG wields so carelessly around the world. Hitler dreamed of global fascism, the USG is implementing it.

We will never have peace until we take the 'profit' out of war.

Here is my response:
Facism - what the hell does "facism" have anything to do with the U.S.? I'll give you a clue - nothing. Facism can be interpreted as one of two things (1) The crushing of all dissent, clearly not a situation we live under. (2) The term can mean a completely state controlled planned economy a la present day russia, which is not run for the benefit of the masses but those in power. While we are heading towards a more state controlled economy, we are so far from it at this point relative to the rest of the world that use of the term here betrays a striking ignorance.

Also, stop throwing this "profit" term around with war. In case you haven't noticed, there is no profit in this - it is costing us $100 billion a year. As I have mentioned multiple times, if we cared about profit, it would have been cheaper to leave Saddam in power and just take the oil bribes he was giving out like candy. You could argue that Haliburtun is making a killing through screwing around with the government reimbursements, but the same is true for almost any government programs, not just military ones (take a look at road or school construction for example, or doctors who used to game medicare). Ironically, given the costs of wars, one could say you have the argument exactly backwards - that we will have no peace until we wage wars ONLY for profit - but that idea could use more flushing out.