If the reason for War is to protect commercial trade, shouldn't business pick up the cost of war, which can in turn be passed onto the consumer? 

- J.M.H.

http://blog.jmhamiltonpublishing.com/2010/03/20/time-to-stop-hitting-up-the-us-taxpayer-and-instead-tax-foreign-nations-and-multinational-corporations-for-us-defense-spending.aspx


German president defends military action

By Dave Graham

BERLIN (Reuters) - Remarks by Germany's president justifying military action to back the country's commercial interests have sparked accusations of "gunboat diplomacy," putting the government on the defensive.

Germany's defense minister on Friday distanced himself from the comments by President Horst Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, who was asked in a weekend radio interview how he viewed the country's deployment in Afghanistan.

A country like Germany with a heavy reliance on foreign trade, Koehler said, must know that "in emergencies military intervention is necessary to uphold our interests, like for example free trade routes, for example to prevent regional instabilities which could have a negative impact on our chances in terms of trade, jobs and income."

Koehler's office said the comments to Deutschlandradio Kultur referred to deployments like the current European anti-piracy mission to secure shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden, but the interviewer clearly referred to Afghanistan.

The excerpt of the interview has been replayed frequently on news broadcasts, prompting harsh criticism from many quarters.

Sensitivity about the military remains high in Germany due to the collective memory of Nazi destruction in World War Two. Politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition said Koehler's choice of words had been unfortunate.

"Economic interests are not the justification for the Afghan deployment," Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told ARD television. He added, however, that protecting shipping lanes was justifiable from a German commercial perspective.

Polls show a majority of Germans oppose the Afghan mission. The killing of civilians during military operations there has created major headaches for Merkel's government, which has said it could begin withdrawing its forces next year.

Koehler's remarks, made on his way back from a visit to Afghanistan, prompted unusually direct criticism of Germany's titular head of state, who has been a popular figure since he assumed office in 2004.

Juergen Trittin, parliamentary chief of the opposition Greens, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily Koehler had failed to grasp what Germany was doing in Afghanistan.

"We don't need gunboat policy, nor a rhetorical loose cannon as the head of state," he told the paper.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)