Two Choices

Arnold Kling, writing on the blog TCS Daily, helps me when he digests popular views on the war against terrorism as gravitating “toward one of two positions:”

1. The Middle East is a hopeless cauldron of hatred. We should focus on homeland security, stay out of the Middle East, and have as little interaction with the Muslim world as possible; or

2. A major war is inevitable, so that we need to get ready for it. Nothing else will stop Iranian aggression, and nothing else will stifle the funding, sponsoring, and glorification of terrorists.

In 2008, I believe that either a Republican running on (1) as a platform or a Democrat running on (2) as a platform could win broad bipartisan support. However, my guess is that the Democrats are likely to come closer to representing (1) in 2008, and as of now my sense is that (1) is more popular than (2).

I don’t think a major war is inevitable, recalling that the Cold War ended without a major hot war. But the situation is just as serious as it was during the height of the Cold War, and really more comparable in the case of Iran to 1938, when we should have known better about where Hitler was headed, but were afraid to act.

Those holding view (1) are like the British appeasers of 1938, or the American isolationists of 1941. They are wrong.