David,
I don't know what list you've been reading, but I haven't seen any of the kind of
one-size-fits-all analyses that you refer to in your post. If you believe that the
market is a state of nature, perhaps it's disconcerting to read that the US' obnoxious
attempt to foist its version of market rationality and business civilization on every
corner of the globe might have painful, awful consequences. (By the way, that's not a
justification: the CIA invented the term "blowback" in reference to just such
consequences.) But that doesn't make it less true.
Perhaps you also failed to notice that it is precisely by leaving the risks of air
travel to be priced by the market (rather than subject to bad big gov't regulation)
that US travel has made us as vulnerable as it has. (ie If we have too few deaths,
we're either lucky or spending too much on safety.) Even the WSJ admitted as much
yesterday, though somehow I doubt that you will be haranguing the CEO's of American
and United for their moral confusion.
And as for that, it's probably matter of perspective. To Republican Manicheists,
confusion is another word for complexity; the clash of civilizations that you
obviously fantacize about will bankrupt the US long before it gets rid of terrorism or
the US' fanatic enemies. There are other roads, even conceding the necessity of armed
force. But they require a worldview that goes beyond good and evil and loony
apocalypticism.
Christian
