You're A Clever Little Monkey Aren't You?

This morning after my weekly Thursday hockey session the banter in the "room" turned to the possibility of war with Iraq. A few comments were made about the difficulty of warfare in cities and the fighting ability or lack therefore of that the Iraqi Army possessed. Pretty much the standard water cooler kind of stuff. And then one of the younger players chirped in with, "The whole thing is just a game designed to justify a military buildup."

I literally went numb. My first instinct was to leap across the room, grab the punk by the scruff of his neck, and introduce his head to the cement wall behind him. Then I wanted to ask this insightful little sage whether the three thousand people who were slaughtered on September 11th were part of the "game"?

Is this what passes for wisdom among the ignorantly cynical set these days? Are you going to start talking about the "military industrial complex" now oh witty one? I had thought that this cliched school of thought had been laid upon the ash heap of history with the end of the Cold War and the dramatic decrease in defense spending that accompanied it. Hmmmm. How does that work now? Oh yes, when there is a significant threat to the national security of the United States, be it Soviet expansionism during the Cold War or terrorist states and groups today, we spend more money on national defense. Quite a crazy concept isn't it?

Does this infantile seer of the real truth actually believe that the Bush administration is involved in a far ranging conspiracy to drum up a foreign threat (again-how much drumming is needed with three thousand dead bodies on our soil?) so that his buddies in the "military industrial complex" can profit from a 11% increase in military spending? There's gotta be an easier way to make a living.