The question is an old one. General Washington weighed in on this topic in 1778, when he said, “There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]…that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism.”
So, there must be a line somewhere. Perhaps it is generational. Maybe our parents and grandparents had a different sense of where that line was. Certainly our leaders did. Roosevelt has been quoted as saying, “"I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster". No doubt there were more than a few millionaires created (or at least maintained) during the war, but that seemed to occur in spite of those holding high office. One wonders, though, what Roosevelt would say today. And, as has been noted many times, Truman equated profiteering with treason. Would he be of the same mind today with the war in Iraq as he was in WWII?
So, where is the line? Has it already been crossed? What do we do as a nation?
The NYT has an article about Halliburton’s noted, or notorious subsidiary, KB&R, and some of their contracts for work in Iraq. One quote that caught our attention referring to a Pentagon military officer, “He noted that the company had listed an impossibly high cost overrun of $436,019,574 on one job, charges of $114,308 for an oil spill cleanup that failed to remove any oil and another set of tasks in which the overruns were 36.9 percent of all costs.”
These are not simple questions – there are real security concerns. A demolished infrastructure (which of course we demolished). We have a much leaner, more outsourced military. And we have a SuperLotto PowerBall culture that did not exist a generation ago. What we do not seem to have are the conversations that our parents and grandparents had before and during WWII about the legitimate role of business in wartime.
Here is the article.