During an appearance I made on MSNBC today in which the subject
started off being about Iraq and then moved to Afghanistan,
anchor David Shuster asked me how I'd finance our continued
presence in the nations. I said that there was a long list of
government programs that I'd like to cut, and he found it rather
amusing that I required more than 10 seconds to explain. But just
for the record, here are a small sampling of the government
measures that I've opposed in recent years:
This does, however, bring up a broader point. Libertarians and
non-interventionist conservatives argue that a more costly
foreign policy abroad undermines the case for fiscal restraint at
home. This is a valid point that I think those who, like me,
favor a limited role for the government domestically have to
grapple with when arguing for military intervention. The way I
think about it is that there's a consistent argument to be made
that national security is one of the legitimate functions of
government because fighting a war is not something that
individuals can realistically do without a government. The most
honest way I can sum up my outlook is that while I believe it's a
proper role for the federal government to prevent thousands of
American civilians from getting killed while going about their
work day, I don't think that government's role is to pay for
everybody's health insurance. Ideally, I'd like to live in a
world in which we didn't need a military at all, or at least one
in which we only required a very limited military merely tasked
with defending our borders from foreign invasion. But while, for
non-interventionists, Sept. 11 proved that we shouldn't be
meddling in world affairs, for me it proved the opposite.
As much as I'd like for the United States to maintain a low
profile, I don't think that such a policy is realistic in a day
and age in which men plotting in caves in Afghanistan can send 19
extremists armed with box cutters to smash airplanes into
buildings and kill 3,000 civilians on U.S. soil. When it comes to
how to prevent terrorist attacks, the record shows that for
decades the frequency and severity of the terrorist threat grew
even as we viewed it as a manageable threat that did not require
a full military action. And I don't think that withdrawing troops
from around the world would satisfy Islamic extremists. So
conceptually speaking, I do support aggressive actions to deprive
those extremists of training grounds and to make sure that
weapons of mass destruction do not fall into the hands of
irrational actors who are enemies of the U.S. That has lead me,
in recent years, to support two objectively costly wars.
So where do the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan fit into this
framework? While I continue to believe that the world is better
off without Saddam Hussein, in hindsight, I don't think the Iraq
War was worth it when you consider the full range of costs
associated with the war. That is, not only the actual cost in
blood and treasure, but the opportunity cost in terms of other
actions that are no longer feasible because of Iraq, most
prominently, our inability to do anything to thwart Iran's
nuclear ambitions. However, I also recognize that since we're
already in Iraq, that we should leave in as responsible a manner
as possible to make sure that there isn't a climate of violence
and civil war that creates a vacuum through which Al Qaeda or
other terrorist groups can build bases, not to mention the
destabilizing effects in the entire region. As far as
Afghanistan, there was a clear connection to Sept. 11, and I also
think it's important that we don't leave prematurely and turn
over the country to the Taliban.
In any event, this is a complicated set of arguments, which are
difficult to make in a short television segment, which you can
watch below:
About the Author
Philip Klein is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Philipaklein
