Amid all the pathetic posturing about who 'won' the war in Southern Lebanon today, I couldn't but wonder (as financial markets generally rose on news of the ceasefire) whether there wasn't a weapons manufacturer out there somewhere cursing its bad luck.
After all, if anyone can really claim to have won the war, surely it must be an entity such as Lockheed Martin, maker of the F16 fighter and the largest weapons manufacturer in the world. Or perhaps Raytheon, maker of the Sidewinder and Tomahawk missiles.
But heck, don't take my word for it, just ask look at this lovely Yahoo! Finance chart. What a marvelous five weeks it's been for Lockheed Martin!! Hoorah!
And what's that you say, America sold $120million of jet fuel to the Israeli military on July 14th? Now, who is the largest supplier of jet fuel to the US (and thereby Israeli) military? Why, that would be BP US. And how did they do in the past five weeks? Well, they were very nicely bucking a downward trend in their stock price until all this talk of a ceasefire began. Damn the UN!
But here's a funny thing...did you know that the last time Israel invaded Lebanon (in 1981), that silly forgetful President Reagan withdrew military aid and froze weapons sales to Israel. This time around? Well, thank God we've got the pro-business George W Bush in the White House.
Good old George, always doing what's good for the economy, even if a few hundred people need to die in the process. Hoorah for George. Hoorah for affordable gas and big SUVs to guzzle it!
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