Individualists and anti-collectivists should be opposed to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran

Oh? So one is to surrender one's life just because one isn't sure no one other than the aggressor will be adversely affected? Especially when the "others" in question offer shelter or aid to the aggressor? The fact is, the innocents run away from the states that shelter those we are fighting whenever they can, and if they really are innocent they recognize that the risk of collateral damage is less than the risks of continuing to live under their current oppressors. The aggressor made the rules, we have no choice but to win by them or die by them. I am not familiar with this Buckley character (other than his botched attempt at destroying Atlas Shrugged, but let's take a look at him since you seem to want to throw him in my camp. He might have a superficially similar argument for military action, but you want to tie to me his advocacy of raising taxes, centralism, and "big government." That is not in fact the case with me, that is not how this war is to be won. We need to slim down our military, and focus not on occupation (which is what's costing us so much) but on killing the enemy in question. This requires at most a delay to changes in the tax code. Buckley supported war production boards and such, I don't, in fact I regard them as inherently incompatible with winning. Furthermore, the war effort could easily be used as the perfect oppurtunity to find such programs as social security as expendable, in their most vulnerable moment, where otherwise they'd be entrenched. If I were convinced that the narrowed wars on Iraq that I advocate could not be voluntarily funded were it not for the government monopolizing the money in question, no I wouldn't support it, because such a fact would only follow from the idea that people like me wouldn't find it worth their money. Keep in mind the war I'm talking is a lot cheaper than what we have now. As for the "war on terrorism," that's a floating abstraction. Terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, even if your enemies happen to be terrorists. We are at war with Al Qaeda, we were at war with the Baath party and the Taliban (which, being gone, means we should be out of Iraq and on to the next place by now, and would be if it weren't for the insistence on Iraqi welfare programs). We are at war with Iran because it is funding various groups who are at war with us, even if we haven't shown the resolve to prosecute the war. The profiteers would obviously support the war, and they would fund it voluntarily, so it's hardly relevant whether it would be supported excluding them. Keep in mind wars, even in a capitalist system, are still a government's job, and thus a voluntarily funded government could fund a war it deemed necessary out of it's general fund even if no one wanted to "donate" to the war cause specifically. Government is the threat, but terrorists are part of governments, and terrorist acts occur in order to establish a new, in this case more threatening, order of government. If you don't think terrorists pose a threat, tell it to the people the 9/11 terrorists killed. If you don't think Al Qaeda is a governmental threat, tell it to their platform which consists of establishing a world government by Sharia law. Terrorist attacks not being the only manner these organizations operate, the current likelihood of dying by terrorist attack isn't really relevant, even if you think those people who would die in terrorist attacks automatically lose their rights (as they would under your argument) just because they are a small minority. Also, there is a lot of money lost every time a skyscraper or some such blows up, and probably would be more if we didn't act in some manner to deter such things, so the monetary costs aren't as simple as you describe. The fear that killed those drivers resulted directly from the terrorist attack, and thus is factored into the cost. If you have a program for stopping the crazed school and mall shooters, feel free to propose it. But in any case, the reason Al Qaeda is more of a concern, is because it is acting with a specific purpose, one that threatens far more people than have died so far. AIDS starts as just a small number of T-Cells getting taken over. If you don't think terrorist tactics can help accomplish a larger program for better or worse, you need to read up on the inspiration the American Revolution drew from the Boston Tea Party, and then imagine what an Jihad Revolution entails. That is precisely what millions of children are being trained for in the parts of the world where our enemies hold power. I don't see anyone trying to organize for a "school and mall nutcase revolution." Different portions of our enemies hate us for different things, but yes Al Qaeda does "hate us for our freedom," even if the philosophy behind it is a bit more sophisticated. Sayyed Qutb, the philosopher who inspired Bin Laden (as well as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, explained quite thoroughally the reasons for his hatred of America. As Wikipedia puts it, "Qutb was extremely critical of many things in the United States: its materialism, individual freedom, economic system, racism, brutal boxing matches, poor haircuts,[10] triviality, restrictions on divorce, enthusiasm for sports, "animal-like" mixing of the sexes (which went on even in churches),[11] and lack of support for the Palestinian struggle[12]." Except for racism, all of these occur as a consequence of freedom. The slogan might have been invented by neocons, but the enemy has done nothing but provide evidence to favor it. Why, what do you think makes them hate us?