A great piece by Paul B. Farrell over at MarketWatch lambastes what he calls “America’s Outrageous War Economy.”

The article has generated over 800 comments, stirring the pot of the MarketWatch audience.

Farrell rightly points out that Americans must have some kind of deep-down love of war for them to allow the government to spend with impunity on anything labeled as “National Defense.”

Bill Bonner agrees: Today, it’s money that counts…

This from Farrell’s article:

We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart’s dark comedic news and Ben Stiller’s new war spoof “Tropic Thunder” … all the while silently, by default, we’re cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction.

• Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world’s total military budgets?

• Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily?

• Why do we shake our collective heads “yes” when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a “war president;” and his party’s presidential candidate chants “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” as if “war” is a celebrity hit song?

• Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky “supplemental appropriations” that are more crooked than Enron’s off-balance-sheet deals?

• Why have Washington’s 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists?

• And why earlier this year did our “support-our-troops” “war president” resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon’s warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding “America’s Outrageous War Economy?” Why? Because we secretly love war!

We’ve lost our moral compass: The contrast between today’s leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both.

These days, war means money, and money means war.

Daily Reckoning editor Bill Bonner, who has railed against the US war economy for years, recently pointed out how even as blood was split in the Balkans the media headlines focused on the money…

“Oil rises on troubles in Georgia…”

The headline is a sign of our time. Today, the world believes in money. In economics. In material progress. Everything else takes second, third, or fourth place. It is easier to see small changes in the price of oil than big changes in the way you look at the world. You can tell when the world changes; but when you change it goes unnoticed.

If this were August 1914, instead of August 2008, the headlines might read:

“French Bonds Fall on Invasion of Belgium.” Or, if this were August of 1939, the headline might read: “Oil prices jump on threatened German invasion of Poland.”

Or how would the modern press report the big event of 2000 years ago? “Miracle worker’s earnings cut short by untimely crucifixion…”

But in years zero, ‘14 and ‘39, money was not the main issue. People believed in politics, nationalism, racism, religion…and reported the news otherwise.

Today, it is money that counts.

The price of oil fell heavily last week. It ended Friday at $115. But this morning, it is rising – on news of a political struggle in South Ossetia. And if this continues, we wouldn’t count on the price of oil to stay ‘low’ for long. The only good news is that when energy is under the gun, the soaring oil price itself opens you up to all kinds of soaring investments. Read more here.

The region is between Russia and Georgia, on the Black Sea. Ossetians, whoever they are, have been there since the days when the ancient Greeks set up colonies around the Black Sea. In the 1930s, the Pontic Greeks were still there – until Stalin deported them to Kazakhstan. The Ossetians, too, disappeared into the maul of the Soviet Union. They were forgotten for most of the 20th century. Then, when the Soviet Union disbanded – there they were. But who then had the right to tell the Ossetians what to do? The Russians? Or the Georgians? The Russians expressed themselves on the issue over the weekend. According to one report, 2,000 people have died in the fighting.

U.S. Vice President, Dick Cheney, had Georgia on his mind over the weekend. He reportedly said that this violence “must not go unanswered.” What sort of response he had in mind, we don’t know. But inasmuch as the United States and Russia are the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear powers, there may be more at stake than the price of oil.