From a letter to co-author Bill Bonner, at the Daily Reckoning, complaining about support for Ron Paul:

“We are spending as much now as we did during WWII for the exact same purpose. Like it or not, we are in WWIII, a war against men as evil as Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito. Fascist, unconscionable Muslim terrorist rats, determined (they’ve said so) to destroy you, me, our children and our way of life. “I’m a Korean Veteran. I know what I was fighting for. Do you? Ron Paul sure doesn’t. What in the world do core libertarian beliefs in limited economic and social constitutional government have to do with the war in Iraq? A great many libertarians want us to win this war because all Americans would then be safer. Defeat would greatly strengthen those who have declared war on us….”

If anyone needs to be answered, it is not the Bush administration, but men like these – brave, honorable, sincere.

So how does one answer them?

1. America was much more powerful in the world in economic terms in World War II than she is today. Her relative strength is much less now. She cannot succeed militarily without the close cooperation of allies and neutral parties. Her interests all over the world would be threatened in the most dire way, otherwise. One example — the Chinese hold US debt to an unparalleled degree; the Chinese are also negotiating with Iran over a number of issues. They would certainly take a strike against Iran negatively.

2. Muslims constitute over a billion of the world’s people, spread out not just in the Middle East, but in Asia, where American interests are at stake as well. Some of these countries, like Malaysia, are players in the Asian growth story and are close enough to China and India that destabilization or Islamicization there wouldl have a spill-over effect. Should things turn ugly, that would drive out US and European multinationals. The fall-out on the global economy would be completely unpredicatble but probably huge.

3. International cooperation – especially with Muslim countries – is absolutely central to the war on terror. That cannot be obtained simply by coddling or bribing unpopular Muslim governments. It has to result from a perception by moderate Muslims that the war on terror really is just that, and not a war on Islam.

3. Terrorism is a tactic, used by all sorts of aggrieved political interests, from the IRA to the Tamil Tigers to Al Qaeda. It is less expensive to talk and negotiate with terrorists than to throw billions of dollars down a black hole of strategic blundering and corruption. It also works better. That is not appeasement. Let’s not get bamboozled by words. There is a time to negotiate and a time to talk tough. Right now, the cards are not with the US at all — no matter how the White House spins it. The cards aren’t with any single person or country or institution. They’ve been shuffled, reshuffled, thrown around and hidden up so many sleeves that it’s any one’s guess where the joker is….or who holds it…..or how it will be played.

4. Military analysts actually consider the Cold War, World War III. They consider the War on Terror, WW IV. Isn’t it convenient that they’re able to keep track of the decades with wars? Doesn’t it make you wonder? If any of these wars were all that successful, they would have led to prolonged peace. They didn’t. Why is that?

More to come