Rediscover Communication

well... I haven't read the Howard Zinn book, and I hate to beat a dead horse, but the idea that war always follows recession is an example of another type of logical fallacy called "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc", which is Latin for "After this, therefore because of this". I realize there is a lot of data and history involved (you mentioned book as "heavy reading"), but the two things (war and economics) are closely tied, but I think in more of a parallel way instead of serially, like you implied. I don't think that war brings us our of recession, I think that impending war leads us into one. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the economy has been hurting significantly. It is a unique period in history (this however-poorly-named war on terrorism is a unique war), and the economy has been acting strangely because of it. There has been an "impending war" for 1 1/2 years now and the economy is showing the strain. Just look at the Dow and NASDAQ volumes for the last two weeks, two months, two years and tell me the trend you see. An analogy would be a person getting sick. You feel worse and worse, largely because of the dread of puking (puking here aptly representing war). Finally, when the puking actually occurs, you are at your lowest point of being sick. You feel better afterwards, but the act of puking did not in fact make you better. There are immunological effects at work on a more complex level (a higher-dimensonal Hilbert or feature space, to use a Neural Networks analogy), and the puking is really only a symptom and contribution of the larger problem.
Anyhow, this is an imperfect analogy, but all analogies are...
anyhow... I guess in all of this, I think that I should make clear the point that I am not pro-war. Not at all. In fact, war has been something that has quite frankly scared me since I was a small child (still does...). But at the same time, I (however reluctantly) see the value that results from a war. It becomes a necessary thing at times, when the value outweighs the costs. The good of the many outweighing the good of the few, says Mr. Spock. I guess that I look at it as a matter of trust (in the end we all have to, whether we like it or not) that the people working on this type of thing are doing the best they can. People do and will trust my opinion and work as an engineer, because that is what I have specialized in. I have to trust that these people (not the ones you see in the news, btw) are specialists in this and have a far better idea of what is going on and the necessary steps to take than I do. The information we have from whatever sources we have does not qualify us as experts on national security. I know this does not fit in with my idea of "Trust no one" but in the grand scheme of things we do, even if in a de facto sort of way...