GVH on Cato's Foreign Policy

Gus Van Horn has a nice post responding to a typical libertarian's view of national self-defense.

As to the semantic question of whether to call Islam's War on the West a "world war", I think that it probably is in terms of the number, extent and ideological devotion of the enemies allied against us, but due to the utter impotence of that enemy (as a direct consequence of the ideas he espouses and lives by) I don't think the confrontation yet rises to the potential destruction and devastation that the term "world war" normally connotes. Of course, if we continue appeasing and paying tribute to the Islamists, rather than eliminating the threat they pose -- eventually the toll they exact could rival that seen in the first two world wars.