I was going to post Prof. Horwitz’s article, but Roy beat me to it.

It’s utterly astounding to see a famous economist (or any economist) arguing that war has the beneficial side-effect of stimulating the economy. Sure, it lowers unemployment, but if people are employed to do things that not only do not contribute to the production of goods and services that people enjoy, but leads to destruction, we are not accomplishing anything worthwhile.

I wonder if Krugman would say that building the pyramids in Egypt was economically good because it stimulated the economy — or can he understand that it was a huge diversion of resources away from the production of things the people wanted into the production of things the rulers wanted?