Syria: The Next “Stimulus?”

As the Obama administration ramps up toward war with Syria, numerous theories are emerging to explain why. Given the complete absence of any US “defense” or other interest in that country’s civil war, the sketchy (at best) evidence that the regime is the force behind recent alleged chemical attacks, etc., it just doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Being an anarchist, my own take on the why of it all is that it’s just a giant transfer payment scheme to the largest welfare program in the world (the US “defense” budget).

But an alternative theory that I also find somewhat persuasive is that war with Syria is the next installment of “economic stimulus.”

President Obama and his economic advisers are, in a word, Keynesians. When the economy’s sucking eggs, they advocate government spending to “prime the pump.” In the usual course of things, this might involve public works projects — roads and bridges and public buildings and so forth.

But the Republican US House of Representatives isn’t really into that kind of stuff except when they have a Republican president.

What most Republican politicians (there are significant exceptions, but this is the rule) are reliably into, for more than half a century now, is spending lots and lots of money to kill lots and lots of non-Americans.

So maybe Obama’s thinking is “if they won’t let me build libraries and schools to stimulate the economy, I’ll do it by using up cruise missiles and bombs and ordering more.”

It makes sense. Ugly sense, but sense.