Since the Gulf War and until recently, I have agreed with and defended the decision made by George H. W. Bush not to pursue the end game with Saddam Hussein in 1991, for all the usual reasons (coalition support, the 52-47 vote in the Senate, the U. N. resolution, etc.). However, with the obvious benefit of hindsight, I am now convinced that this decision, exacerbated by the feckless policies of the Clinton administration, produced the enabling conditions that led to the current war. OK, maybe it took a 9-11 event to shock us to the realization that civilization is at stake and maybe the Gulf War couldn’t have been fought or justified on such terms. Whatever the philosophical or practical confusion then, there should be none now. I repeat: there are no acceptable “root causes” for terrorism or its sponsorship, ever. Pluralism, multiculturalism, tolerance, moral equivalence, whatever their postmodern adaptations, don’t extend to a defense of nihilism. So I now find myself in complete agreement with Joe Lieberman—we need no more evidence; after the defeat of the Taliban, Saddam Hussein must go.

Having established moral clarity, there remain questions we have not been forced to consider at least since the end of World War II because the nature of the Cold War gave us some comfort of clarity, except in the circles of leftist “fellow travelers”. Now we face evil of the kind that is nihilistic in the same sense as Nazism, however, we face it in a world that has been structured to deal only with the East/West confrontation of the Cold War. So now we must deal with, for example, the split-mindedness and duplicity of the Saudi Arabian royal family, and we must re-examine all of the “deals” and accommodations we made over the past 50-60 years in defense of our strategic interests that were defined through the East/West prism. Even more difficult, we must do this in an environment that has been compromised by a half-century of the “hollowing” of the moral core of the West, primarily by our intellectual class.

The ultimate outcome will be transformational, for I believe there is no way to avoid the massive restructuring of the Muslim world that will follow (and parallel) this conflict. The ruling elites in these societies, friend and foe alike, must choose which future they want, and the status quo ante is not acceptable for us or them. In too many instances in the past, U. S. foreign policy has supported stability as the ultimate objective, where revolution would have been preferable, albeit messy. Might this mean transitional occupation in some instances? Possibly. A return to some semblance of colonialism, as some have suggested? Maybe. After all, we’re dealing with a region with no core nation-state leadership, and societies that did not have a Magna Carta, a Reformation, a Counter-Reformation, or an Enlightenment. True, these are the unique experiences of the West, but they produced the universal values of successful civilization that most of the world is struggling to emulate in their own way. In fact, if you’re watching closely, the stirrings of unrest are already bubbling in the streets of Iran. Vive la revolution!

While the War on Terrorism dominates affairs of state for the foreseeable future, we must maintain vigilance on domestic policy and not allow this crisis to disorient our thinking. I have several points in mind. One is illustrated by this quote from Benjamin Franklin, which needs almost no explanation: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I would only add that I am highly skeptical of czar-like offices such as that of Tom Ridge’s Office of Homeland Security. I’m not denying that this war has a home front, but it will not be won with internal security, but only by defeating the enemy at its source. Point two is to be reminded that the growth of centralized government at the Federal level and its dominance in our lives, which flowered in the 20th century after being given impetus by Lincoln in the 19th, was primarily initiated and justified by war preparation and execution. Some silliness has begun under the guise of response to, and recovery from, the 9-11 attack (airline bailouts, expansion of agricultural and other distressed business subsidies, federalizing airport security, etc.). Almost anything can be defined to fit the fight against terrorism, repairing damage, or countering recession, and the feeding frenzy is on. The Cato Institute reports that the proposed FY2002 budget includes the largest corporate welfare budget in history, exceeding the $87 billion of FY2001. Are we paying attention?

Essentially, our domestic policy priorities should be intact—reform of Social Security, education, immigration reform—and a few others should be given higher priority, such as permanent tax rate cuts, enhanced defense and intelligence capabilities, and a capital gains tax rate cut. But the war should be no excuse for an expansion of Leviathan beyond our defense needs, which had been overly depleted even before 9-11. In the majoritarian democracy that we have become, the response to the highest anxieties of the people tends to permanently increase the size of the public sector at the expense of the private. This would be a mistake. For all the perceived need for “bipartisanship”, I think it is time for President Bush to reconsider the bipartisan love-fest and fight for sound long-range policy, even if it means a few vetoes. He has the political capital to do so.

What the enemies of Israel and America really hate and fear is human creativity. Flourishing only under capitalism, creativity is our key endowment, in the image of our creator. Without the miracle of mind, expressed in the art and enterprise of a free society, human beings become mere meat. Without the word that breathes spirit into creation, nature is brutal, deadly, and Darwinian. Soulless butchers rule, and rush to bury civilization under the rubble. Human creativity reflects divine creation. And this arouses the unending abomination of nihilists everywhere. That is the real evil in the Luddite urge—the annihilation of the sapient creativity that lifts humans beyond the beasts and the Bin Ladens.
—-George Gilder