Cato Institute Supports Obama's Views on Security

In as much as it finds it difficult to find a label, the Cato Institute is a respected libertarian think tank in Washington DC. Its policy orientation is such that it would be difficult to find a congruence with president Obama's political views. Still, it appears that they are strange bedfellows in respect to the necessary approaches to the response to terrorism. Their ideological differences apart, this article by Michael Newman in Slate Magazine finds mention in this blog for two main reasons.

The first and most obvious is the fact that president Obama and Cato Institute are able to reach a nearly common view on the issue of national security in spite of the fact that the orientation of the think tank would make it more easily aligned to a Republican stance. Secondly, my view is that despite the claim that the last administration of the US prevented another attack on US soil, this is not unqualified evidence of a successful policy. It may just be that the terrorists are unable to immediately respond or are biding their time. Cato and the Obama administration are both right in stating that it is not necessary for the US to trade off civil rights in exchange for security. That is not only a false choice, but is also bound to be ineffective. As the story states, the maintenance of a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay does not reflect well on the credentials of a country built on the quest for human freedom.

So while I too find myself differing both with Cato Institute's policy prescriptions in limited respects and with President Obama's too, I think that the president would do well to cast a wider net towards catching policy ideas from a larger proportion of the excellent think tanks found in Washington DC. His country may not only be all the better for it, but he may just have more intellectual ammunition for the change that US citizens started.