Hezbollah And Raytheon

Long War: Over the past few months Iran has given Hezbollah thousands of high quality short range missiles. This means that if Israel and Hezbollah go to war again like they did in 2006, then thousands of Israeli civilians will be killed by the bad guys. This did not happen in the last war. In the event of war, Israel would be forced to pretty much carpet bomb Lebanon, killing tens of thousands of innocent Lebanese civilians and enraging the Arab world.
In preparation for all this, Hezbollah has torn down the government of Lebanon and put the country's democracy in a fragile state. If war with Israel were to break out before a new government were formed (months away at best), then Hezbollah could turn a shattered Lebanon into an Islamic dictatorship. Currently Lebanon is the world's only functioning Arab democracy, other than Iraq. Iraq's democracy is based on the religious/ethnic structuring of Lebanon's government. Probably this structuring is the only way democracy can function in the Mideast. It is, therefore, something of immense value to the good guys in the Long War.
Like Al Qaeda, Hezbollah was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn grew out of the Sudanese Civil War. So Hezbollah's roots run deep into the fabric of the Long War and it would be very bad if it got its way. Hezbollah is terrified of the election in South Sudan and needs to stop a tide of anti-jihadist democracy from sweeping it aside.
Sec. Gates announced today that Raytheon's $835 billion SLAMRAAM missile program will be cancelled but the money will be recirculated back into Raytheon's short range missile and artillery defense programs. This technology is designed to counter Hezbollah's missile arsenal.
Raytheon is up 9% in the past 3 months. It is rising against a fierce tide of analyst warnings against defense stocks. No, no, no, they cry, a brain dead liberal peacenik is in the White House. Following this logic, investors the other day forced ITT to split itself up to shed its "toxic" defense business. Even that wasn't good enough, ITT is now being pressured to sell its defense business, not just spin it off.
All other great imperial powers have loved their evil and immoral empires and fought savagely to keep them intact. America hates its globe straddling and highly moral military empire and wishes it would somehow just go away. Americans are indeed warlike, but think of war as a kind of sport, like a football game, that is quickly over. As this consciousness slowly changes defense stocks will do better.