This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 11th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the Washington foreign policy establishment, it's not uncommon to hear the claim that the

United States is not, in fact, engaged in endless war.

For Stephen Wirthheim, a co-founder of the new Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

that claimed Texas Credulity.

We talked about war and the establishment thinkers who believed

were not engaged in an endless one. Last week, that's before the president fired

his national security advisor John Bolton. It has been mentioned on this program and I'm sure many others this notion that seems to be all

too popular in Washington foreign policy circles and that is just the notion that the United States is not engaged in endless war and I know that's a that's a term that gets a lot of hackles up in general but even more deeply the there are people who

Make the claim and people who either either ought to know better or do not view this war making that

the US is engaging in as substantial. Of course it is, but view the United States essentially at peace. So in in

general what do you make of of those people I think some people can be

forgiven for for making that, having that thought.

But what do you make of that general sense?

Well, there are people who know the facts of what the United States is doing, or certainly are paid to know the facts, whether they do or not.

And they're making one of two claims sometimes both simultaneously.

One is that the United States is at endless war, but that's okay.

In fact, that's a good thing.

So the Council on Foreign Relations fellow and Washington Post columnist Max Boot made this claim earlier this year when he likened low-level warfare by the United States in his view to the

Indian Wars in his term from the United States past or to British Imperial Policing.

No big deal.

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