Gundam Seed Destiny and The Military Industrial Complex

Saying something like 'I actually kind of liked Gundam Seed Destiny' in the Gundam community is kind of akin to sieg heiling while simultaneously drinking orphan's tears from a cup made from the polished bones of one-month-old puppies, or alternatively claiming the U.C. continuity is overrated. I sort of feel like this anime gets a bit more of a bad rap than it deserves. Destiny is not a great series, in fact I'd be willing to concede that it's not even a good series, but with the amount of flak I've seen it getting, you'd think that this has a whiny self-righteous teenage edgy mcmopes-a-lot as a secondary protagonist and a main protagonist who would've ascended into the skies to become our lord  and savoir, but failed because the nails couldn't pierce his plot armor*.  Seriously— the series boasts more flashbacks than Memento, recycles animations like I joke about Call of Duty, and simultaneously boasts one of the best and worst villains I've seen in anime...and they're the same person... With that said—the recycled clips themselves are well-animated, it has a fantastic soundtrack, and has valuable commentary on one of the roots of war.

Are you on the edge of your seats? Don't be. Expect this to be drier than an evaporated glass of Merlot. Oh, and you've had a decade to watch this, so no complaining about spoilers. To give you a bit of of shallow context—the military industrial complex refers to the arms industry. They supply a country with everything from tanks to jets, to battleships. Basically they make weapons of war. So what happens when there is no war? Demand on their products decreases. What creates demand? You've got one guess. The influence of the military industrial complex on politics and war is well documented. Eisenhower himself warned the public of the dangers that the military industrial complex could potentially have on the course of American history in his final speech as president. To boil it down to the basics:

1. The Primary goal of any corporation in a free market based economy is to turn a profit 
2. The military industrial complex does make money as countries update their military and buy the latest technology, but not nearly as much as when a country is at war and a constant stream of weapons is needed to fight.
3. Using lobbyists, corporations fund politicians in order to allow them to be elected to various positions in the government. Thus, corporations have a degree of influence on the decisions a politician makes. Pass that bill limiting the funding of the military and in a couple years you might find yourself facing an opponent with much better funds and, coincidentally, a bit more sympathy toward the repeal of said bill.
4. This factors in to a politicians decisions in deciding whether or not to go to war. It's not that this is the deciding factor of war. The influence of the military industrial complex has on war is making it more likely that the politician will go to war than if the MIC wasn't involved. 

Destiny presents a future where the MIC is the primary influence on whether or not a country (or in this case a planet) will go to war. Hidden inside the radical anti-coordinator (term for genetically engineered people who live in Space Colonies) group Blue Cosmos, an inner circle of various parts of the MIC gather in order to push the possibility of war into the certainty of war. After taking advantage of an opportunity to create a war, Logos finds itself pitted against Chairman Durandal, a man who understands the complexities of the system of war and potential profits made from it. His solution to the issue of profiting off of war is to directly target Logos bases of operation and high ranking officials.

The angst...

You may be asking, justifiably, 'how will this help?' Violence will just lead to more violence, just destroying the MIC won't solve the problem. Exactly—which is why Durandal has to pull the weed out by its roots; anything else will allow it to grow back stronger than ever. Can you guess what's about to happen? I mean you shouldn't. The series has to find some way to make the good guys the good guys and in keeping with its 'there are no right sides in war,' bullshit it decides to make the Chairman's solution be a Brave New World style way of genetically engineering everybody to have one skill and only one skill thus they will never have the ambition or aptitude to pull anything like a war off ever again and uuuuugghhhhh. Here are a few reasons why this would suck;

1. It makes everyone coordinators, means that ZAFT would have to forcibly make everyone a coordinator. Not only might this lead to another war, but also creates more resentment than ever and is the equivalent of what Blue Cosmos was trying to do to coordinators.
2. Obvious moral issues.
3. Power in numbers, you might make someone great at piloting a mobile suit, and other that suck piloting wise, but enough in numbers can overwhelm a really good...actually never-mind—this is Gundam we're talking about. 
4. Probably increases tension between classes more than it would otherwise; makes rebellion more likely.
5. An enforced caste system determined entirely by birth without any room for class movement. 
6. There is a much easier system to implement that would solve the whole MIC problem.

What is that other method? Nationalizing the MIC. Assuming you haven't left in a fit of capitalist outrage, let me explain. What Durandal wants to discourage is the use of war as a way to earn profit. Nationalizing the Military Industrial Complex means that it is no longer profiting from war. No-one is paid to buy arms, therefore the only way to profit from war is to fight a war where winning the war would yield enormous economic advantage (Natural resources, eliminating a rival, etc). It's not that nationalizing the MIC would eliminate war altogether, but it does eradicate a factor making war more likely.

Now that it's been remastered...yeah can't think of a joke for this one

So there you go. If you liked this, like it. Sharing is also great, and commenting is even better. I promise I'll make something funnier next time...and maybe before the turn of the century.
 *Actually he just skipped the 'lord and savior' and became God.