We’ve been pretty critical of the Cato Institute around here, frequently warning our antiwar peeps that money sent to Brink Lindsey and co. is wasted, at best. But now, in the interest of fairness, I must issue a consumer alert for pro-war Cato donors: you aren’t getting your money’s worth either. Example:
It is never the waging of wars that makes you safer, only the winning of them.
The U.S. was not safer in 1942–1945 than it had been in early 1941. We entered World War II because winning it would make America safer. In trying to win it, we suffered over a million casualties.
Part of the argument for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime was that a beachhead for freedom and democracy in a Muslim Middle Eastern nation would, in the long term, weaken militant Islamism and promote peace. It was never suggested that the process of trying to create that beachhead would itself make anyone safer — no more than it was suggested that Americans would be safer during our participation in WW II.
Hence, it is fatuous to argue that a current rise in terrorist recruitment proves that toppling Saddam was a bad idea. Efforts to create a free and democratic Iraq are ongoing — the war is still in progress.
That is, what has actually happened since the war began doesn’t matter, because what war supporters said would happen could theoretically still happen – kind of; we may have to accept defeat in the scavenger hunt and cakewalk events – as long as we keep trying to make it happen. Plus watch Saving Private Ryan.
Surely you guys can do better than this.