This speech was part of a panel sponsored by the Future of Freedom Foundation, Campaign for Liberty and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA) held on February 20th at the 2010 CPAC. The panel presentation was titled “Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terror.”
The phrase “war on terror” has been used to justify trillions of dollars in spending, hundreds of thousands of new government positions, and thousands of new government contracts. At the same time, the “war on terror” has produced very little in terms of new technology or enhanced security, has vastly increased the degree of national centralization, and has created many new permanent trees and branches in the gnarled world of federal and state institutions.
The Congressional Research Service reported in September 2009 the cost of the “War on Terror” since 9/11 at almost one trillion dollars. But they looked only at the cost of the three military operations launched in response to 9/11. They counted only the war in Afghanistan (9 years running), the war in Iraq (7 years running), and the overall effort to secure US military installations around the world – not our borders at home, but our forward deployed empire.