I think this is right:
when you have bad economic times, both people and businesses are reluctant to spend money, or simply don't have it to spend. But nobody spending money makes for worse economic times, which can be a vicious circle.

Whereas war encourages companies to spend money. For example Halliburton wants to get in on the government contracts that are going, so they hire people. But then the companies that supply eg office furniture see that Halliburton are going to be buying a lot of desks for all their new people, so they want to expand their operations to be in the best position to take advantage of this new demand. And then it flows on to the companies that supply them, and so on, making a virtuous circle from a purely economic point of view.

I'm not sure how accurate this all is, but I think that's the basic argument of how capitalism leads to war (aside from the obvious one, getting control of valuable resources and cheap labour from militarily weaker governments).
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 27 Jan 2009, 15:12, Reply)