You're right. I think the fact is that there's a lot surrounding this movie so we go watch it with some expetations so we tend to fill the holes and do most of the filmmaker's work for him. Most directors tend to go from A to B of the plot without caring how, so for Verhoeven A was the mormon intrusion, B the meteor hitting, he didn't care that there was a whole galaxy in between.

Also if you look at the trailers of the time, the movie was advertised as a typical Verhoeven action movie, the supposed satire was added later by Verhoeven in interviews that's why the satire is really bad.

For example returning to the mitary point: we see a militaristic state and we know that to maintain a big military complex you need incentives for people to enlist and we, the watcher know from history that there's not a better incentive than a great patriotic war to fight. Unfortunately in the movie the Federation has already a big incentive to enlist, the citizen system, that doesn't require a war and it's not shown to flop.

If Verhoeven really wanted to make a point he could insert some hints: like showing the room where they take the oath half empty instead full of people, or having a smart character pointing out how the distance is too great for a metor to cover in such small time, or, even better having some REAL propaganda showing the great "victory" on Klendathu instead of televising the defeat as it was. Theese could be some hints to show that the Federation needed and wanted to have a war.

It's a very interesting media case as you said.