IRVINE, CA--The pacifist ideas advocated by the "anti-war" movement--and practiced by our government for decades--have led to our current war and will lead America to ever longer and wider wars, said a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
      "Pacifism," said Alex Epstein, "necessarily invites escalating acts of war against anyone who practices it. Our military inaction sends the message to an aggressor--and to other, potential aggressors--that it will benefit by attacking the United States. After years of American politicians acting like anti-war peaceniks in the Middle East, sending over diplomats instead of soldiers, Islamic terrorism proliferated from a few gangs of thugs to a worldwide scourge--making possible the attacks of September 11. To whatever extent 'anti-war' protesters influence policy, they are not helping to prevent war; they are acting to make war more frequent and deadly, by making our enemies more aggressive, more plentiful, and more powerful."
      "The only way to deal with militant enemies is to show them unequivocally that aggression against the United States will lead to their destruction," said Epstein. "The only means of imparting this lesson is overwhelming military force--enough to defeat and incapacitate the enemy. Had we annihilated the Iranian regime 23 years ago, we could have thwarted Islamic terrorism at the beginning, with far less cost than will be required to defeat terrorism today.
      "The suicidal stance of peaceniks is no innocent error or mere overflow of youthful idealism. It is the product of a fundamentally immoral commitment: the commitment to ignore reality--from the historical evidence of the consequences of pacifism to the very existence of the violent threats that confront us today--in favor of the wish that laying down our arms will achieve peace somehow."

Ayn Rand Institute executive director Yaron Brook is available for interviews on this topic.