Simon Jenkins - arsehole of the week

In an otherwise unexceptionable Guardian article on the Wikileaks dossier of Afghanistan war logs, sixty-seven year-old Simon Jenkins, in his time an eminent journopuke (knighthood in 2004) and more recently author of books on Britain's architectural heritage, ends with the following stupidity:

I cannot avoid the conclusion that, just as the Pashtun are said to be "hardwired to fight", so now are certain western regimes. War is about sating the military-security-industrial complex, a lobby so potent that, long after the cold war ended, it can induce democratic leaders to expend quantities of blood and money on such specious pretexts as suppressing dictators in one country and terror in another.

If Jenkins had bothered to read up on the subject he would know that armed forces and arms manufacturers hate wars. Wars expose the personal and institutional inadequacies of the armed forces, reveal the flaws in weapons systems and also reduce the long production runs that characterize peacetime procurement, which fatten the profits of the manufacturers and the wallets of senior officers and officials.

Oh, and what about those boring old lefty comments about "the military-security-industrial complex" in "certain western regimes"? The outstanding examples of the former are Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba - and are we to understand that only western regimes make war on rogue regimes? Silly man.