Here?s another reason why hawkish fusionist types like me will continue to venerate and use of the work of the Cato Institute in Washington on domestic issues but eschew their increasingly wacky and embarrassing foreign-policy prescriptions.
The Institute?s Charles Pena writes in a commentary today that reports of al Qaeda?s involvement with the Islamofascist regime in Iran are no more a justification for American reaction than similar, somewhat less firm evidence of linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?s Iraqi regime. Here?s part of Pena?s argument:
The bottom line, however, is that Iran, like Iraq, is not a direct military threat to the United States, even if it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist groups Iran supports are anti-Israeli and do not currently target the United States.
Al Qaeda, with whom Iran is now alleged to be in cahoots, never showed much interest in Israel, actually, until quite recently, What they have clearly demonstrated over the past six years, in multiple locations around the world, is a willingness to kill Americans. Moreover, the Iranian terror arm Hezbollah is credibly implicated in the bombing of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia about eight years ago. There are certainly reasonable arguments to be made against U.S. military intervention in Iran ? we are not prepared for such an eventuality, obviously ? but Pena and Cato are not making them, or at least they are not limiting themselves to such arguments. They are, if I may be blunt, making fools of themselves, and of libertarians by implication, and I?m not pleased about it.
