> The funding, results and motivations of the parties involved are complicated enough that dismissing it with this cynical view is so overly simplistic that it's not worth mentioning.

People aren't that complicated. Especially at the top.

> Even the notion that the military's aim is to "kill people" is ridiculous.

Ridiculous? It's the basic core function of a military. Imagine a military that couldn't kill people. Now that would be ridiculous.

> It's aim is be able to kill people so that actually killing them isn't necessary in order to defend its own people.

By your logic, the russian military is defending russians by killing ukrainians in ukraine? The US military was defending americans by killing iraqis in iraq? How does that logic work?

I thought the military exists to spread democracy [ in oil rich countries ]?