Dems and GOP are fun to bash, but so are Libertarians...

[kandrathe]

Nah, war isn't profitable. It's an excellent diversionary tool for politicians still; I'll give you that.

Mmmm. More than that I think. Chaos and unpredictability are unprofitable, and a motivation for capitalists to support a war. Peaceful resolution (a political resolution) is more profitable, and the most desirable outcome. In WWII, the preponderance of people in the US wanted to stay out of Europe's war. It wasn't until the publicity of the Germans sinking many US ships, some of which were passenger ships, that turned the tide of US opinion to support declaring war. Even then, we didn't declare war upon Germany until December 11th, 1941, 4 days after Pearl Harbor. This was over three years after Britain and France had declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland.

In Iraq, for example, Saddam created uncertainty, and so he became a liability for the west. Were it possible to unseat Saddam, and have Iraq return into "the fold of peaceful (predictable) nations", then the war would not have been supported by capitalists. There may be some (evil) capitalists who look for any opportunity to deplete US ordinance stockpiles in the hopes of rebuilding them. Anyone who thinks destroying the infrastructure of Iraq was done to create opportunity hasn't read or understood the simplest fundamentals of economics (Smith, Bastiat et. al.). These evil capitalists are most assuredly Keynesians. Nobody wants to invest in Venezula (not even the Venezulans) for fear of what Chavez will do with their "capital". And, as much as RR wants to demagogue it, capital is just the accumulated value of labor and property. Most people accumulate their wealth into their homes.

In the US, in both the Republican and Democratic parties, there are a preponderance of hawkish (neocons) who tend to wield our war machine whimsically at times. This is the danger of a standing army; you pay billions for the capability and so you are prone to use it when you can to justify its existence. If you had less power, you'd be more likely to negotiate a peaceful compromise. Now, we don't have to compromise, and it often shows in our belligerent and brutish approach to foreign policy.

An objective look at the Clinton, Bush, Obama long term strategy on Iraq and Afghanistan would be that the west (led by the US) seeks to use our military and economic power to transform parts of the middle east (it matters not which countries) into western friendly enclaves, and due to that pressure the others would need to conform to that changing political dynamic. Iraq and Afghanistan are well suited for this purpose; They are well positioned geographically to influence the region, they had a relatively weak military (compared to Pakistan, or Iran), Iraq was semi-secular already, Afghanistan's culture was in disarray after the Soviets and Taliban, and they weren't the lightening rods that Saudi Arabia (Mecca, Medina) would have been. From a capitalist point of view, this is a long term investment seeking to transform them into a more peaceful and prosperous region, much as was rebuilding Europe after WWII. I'm not a supporter of the strategy, just observing what they've said and done. I'm in favor of the outcome, but I'm not keen on risking our capital to make it happen.

What we face now in the world are a myriad of petty despots, who convince their military to stand behind them. We still pretty much have the same amount of power required to face off the Soviet Empire. The Libertarian position is that we should return to a position of defending the US, and get our military out of police operations (e.g. interdicting narcotics). That would cut military spending by a third to half over time, and create stability by transferring the defense of our allies to our allies. And... the bottom line is that the government should not be using US tax money to fund investment in foreign infrastructure.

So what's wrong with that, in and of itself? The government isn't always the best provider of certain services.

Want an example? Amtrak. Would you pay for a $16 hamburger, reheated in a microwave? There is very little reason why the operation of the trains shouldn't be privatized. Amtrak is an anachronism to the antiquated labor rules within the rail industry. The same rules that when cleared away by Pres. Carter, made trucking more viable for most long haul transportation in the US.