Here’s an idea fit for tonight’s debate: The purposes of U.S. foreign policy are these, in ascending order of importance:
3. To defend the “interests” of American investors overseas who should be paying their own way or doing business here instead.
2. To establish a vast jobs program for Republican legislators and rent-seekers to counter-balance all the Democratic jobs programs. (This is the notion that got me thrown off of FreeRepublic.com, BTW.)
1. To expend munitions supplies, thus to prompt re-orders from arms-makers — which is to say reliable campaign donors.
Assassination of truly psychotic trouble-makers is fast and cheap, but it leaves the arsenals full and the Pentagon empty.
The Broken Window Fallacy is a useful lens when you are thinking about a (fictional) economy-as-a-whole. But the glazier’s pecuniary interests run so far the other way that he might hire a secret squad of vandals if he could get away with it.
The name for that squad: The Few. The Proud. The Duped.
