Re : TownHall.com – 4/17/2008 – “What Price Freedom?” – Lawrence Kudlow

Kudlow is very confused.

Expending 1% of gross domestic product for our safety is a reasonable sized investment. Flushing 1% of our gross domestic product down the drain is another matter altogether. Except for our underspending in Afghanistan, at least that part of the war on terrorism has been well spent and has greatly lessened our danger from al-Qaida. Our expenditures on domestic security have produced positive results although the effectiveness and efficiency with which our domestic security programs have been administrated has reduced the effectiveness of what should have been achieved with those expenditures.

But Iraq is a different story. While Saddam was a theoretical supporter of terrorism against the USA, he had kept al-Qaida and similar organizations out of Iraq because he realized that they were an even greater threat to him then they were to the USA. Al-Qaida in Iraq (which has a focus on Iraqi interests and in international affairs is only weakly linked to al-Qaida itself) was formed after the fall of Saddam by an inflow of non-Iraqi Islamists. While the removal of Saddam did accomplish certain US strategic goals, it also resulted in strengthening the position of Iran in the mid-east and providing an increased focus on Islamic terrorist groups as defenders of Islam from the attack by the USA --- failures that far exceeded any positive results we have achieved so far in Iraq.

Kudlow’s economic arguments make even less sense than his geopolitical ones. Whatever economic gains have been made under the current administration have been financed by international debt, which someday will come due. Think how much better our economy might have been.