The Centrifuge of War

When is a war really necessary? Or not even a war, but a military action? Right now, we're faced with that question as North Korea is getting ready to test it's new Taepodong-2 missile, with a range of up to 9,300 miles. Walter Mondale, former Vice-President and one time presidential candidate has called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea's missile program if they refuse to dismantle it. While the tough rhetoric is not surprising, even for a Democrat, one should note it is an election year. And of course, such a strategy doesn't allow for a follow-up, i.e., what to do when North Korea unleashes chemical weapons against Seoul? Well, the war planners haven't thought that far ahead, but they rarely do. Just look at Iraq.
North korea, which has had a moratorium on it's missile program since 1998, has been eager lately to hold talks with the current ADD-ministration. Even though it has been named by the Bush regime as a member of the Axis of Evil, there has been no desire to open talks with them. I'm sure the thinking has been "we'll get around to them", but they got sidetracked threatening every country in the Gulf Region. Like Iran.
Well, as far as Iran goes, back in 2003 Iran offered to hold talks with the US, putting everything from it's nuclear plan to recognition of Israel and end of support for Palestinians on the table, only to nbe rebuffed, by, you guessed it, the Bush ADD-ministration. they were busy planning war with Iraq, well, like our plans for North Korea, the bombing part, not the dealing with the aftermath part, but when you suffer from ADD, you always remember-baby steps. This led to the replacement of a moderate president with a hardliner and voila! Another reason for war! So now we have two potential wars that could have been potentially avoided, if the White House wasn't occupied by neocon war mongers, intent on enriching Republican contractors in the centrifuge of war.
Well, how about Iraq? Certainly that war was necessary, right? Well, not really. You see, Saddam, perhaps reading the writing on the wall, offered to make a deal to avert war as well. This deal would allow US soldiers and weapons inspectors in to search his whole country, hold elections, recognise Israel, and hand over a suspect in the 1993 World trade Center bombing sitting in an Iraqi jail. Of course, the offer went through the self-avowed prince of darkness, Richard Perle, who stepped down from his position on the Pentagon's Citizen Advisory Board rather than give up the oppurtunity to make billions off said war with Iraq.
So, there you have it. Wars started for solely for the necessity of a group of greedy bastards to siphon off more tax payer dollars (while getting a nice tax cut in return). What the fuck, blood money spends the same as hard earned cash, and maybe they'll pull a Warren Buffet or Bill Gates and donate large chunks of their billions to charity. But I wouldn't count on that any more than I would count on the US ground based interceptors actually averting a missile attack. And you can rest assured that after $43 billion it doesn't work, neither does the guy who got the defense contract to build it.