Put a cap on war-based hyper-profits

The United States is at war in Iraq, in Afghanistan and globally against terrorism. President Bush confirms the ventures' seriousness by asking Congress for an extra $87 billion of military- and reconstruction-related funding plus $41.3 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.

Daily counts of our casualties tell us that the costs are not only economic. The expense will rise because, the president says, U.S. resolve is firm, and we won't quit until the job is done.

It is deeply puzzling in this context why the president asks the nation to sacrifice for the war while allowing so many to profit unduly from it...

...A long, troubling list of companies, including the firm that Dick Cheney led before resigning to become Bush's vice presidential running mate, have been awarded immense no-bid contracts to perform war-related services.

The campaign in Iraq is a two-wave offensive, say some antiwar groups. In their view, first comes the military, then come the corporations. This opinion is harsh, but it contains kernels of truth.

So it is valid to ask -- as young Americans are killed and wounded -- whether favored businesses should be able to profit limitlessly from the increased spending that wars force government to undertake and the larger debts that taxpayers must support in higher taxes or in reduced services...

...An excess-profits-tax bill should be introduced into the House of Representatives and acted on without delay. No war-related contract should be awarded or extended without provisions indicating that the deal will be subject to any excess-profits ceilings that Congress enacts. Robert Landauer: 503-221-8157, or 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 or robertlandauer@news.oregonian.com

Disguised in this mildly patronizing editorial is this notion as much as stated by Anti-War/Anti-Bush protestors:

“Remove the profit motive for war.”

Obviously, the Right answer is that we did just that. We removed the motive of oppressive authoritarianism. Furthermore, this war was not fought for monetary profit, but for a broad litany of just reasons, not the least of which include security, respect, and moral righteousness. Yet, I would answer this flawed ascertion another way.

The profit motive for war is not dollars, but power. More specifically, power is seized by means of force by ambitious individuals or factions from those who have it qua status quo. In the case of Iraq, there is no such power. The people have nothing to offer on a grand scale at present… except oil. Collectively (and I will for the sake of this discussion ignore the inherent contradiction) they own that resource. The more aggressively they can market that resource, the more power (in the form of autonomy) they buy. Money is only involved in as much as it represents the purchase of power in the global economic market. Individuals ultimately develop wealth and sovereignty by offering something of themselves… their effort. I know that I am preaching to the choir, but bear with me here. Corporations seek only to control market sectors fed by the consumption and production of individuals acting in their own interests. It is a constructive process that engages effort to maintain and grow the system. War is an inherently destructive process that spends effort without reciprocal gain. It is, therefore, antithetical to suggest that profit in the form of money is the motivation for war. There is no incentive in spending money and human potential in the form of lives to make money. It would be as ridiculous to suggest that one could save gas by pushing one’s car to work. Profit IS, however, the mechanism by which to rebuild and develop the lives of individual Iraqi’s. The more profit for us and them, the better. No one actually loses when you realize that the market fundamentally exchanges the desires of two parties. If the trade involves the freedom of volition, profit is always reciprocal.

What this nimrod fails to mention is that, during the Clinton Administration, Halliburton won a bidded contract to provide logistical services to the military, and the contracts in Iraq are an offshoot of that.

I swear, these damn libs just keep recycling the same ol' talking points again and again no matter how stale or worn out they get.

Here's a question: if Congress hadn't arbitrarily limited defense profits in WWII and Korea, would there have been an increased incentive to speed the pace of military technology?

If our technology outsripped Russian technology in the 1950s instead of the 1980s, would the Cold War have ended in the 1960s?

Food for thought.

All I know is that punishing defense contractors for profiting from weapons systems means surrendering our technological edge.

Which would be disastrous for this country.

Which would be exactly what this editorialist and his ilk want: a weak, intimidated America.

This is the part that gets me. They never gave anyone else a chance to even bid.

Ever hear of LOGCAPS? That is where, every 4-5 years, the Army bids out to a corporation a contract to provide logistical services for interventions. Halliburton was awarded that contract in 1992, lost it in 1997, and was awarded it once again in 2001. So they had already gone through a competitive bidding process to be in a position to provide support in Iraq.

Rich Lowry had an excellent overview of this here.

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