It seems like the War on Terror, etc, are not actually about prevention, but about “cures”.
Some drug addiction epidemic or terrorist attack happens. Instead of it being treated as an isolated disaster like a flood, which we should (but don’t) invest in preventing in the future, it gets described as an ongoing War which we need to win. This puts it firmly in the “ongoing disaster we need to cure” camp, and so cost is no object.
I wonder if the reason there appears to be a contradiction is just that some policy-makers take prevention-type measures and create a framing of “ongoing disaster” around it, to make it look like a cure (and also to get it done).
It seems like the War on Terror, etc, are not actually about prevention, but about “cures”.
Some drug addiction epidemic or terrorist attack happens. Instead of it being treated as an isolated disaster like a flood, which we should (but don’t) invest in preventing in the future, it gets described as an ongoing War which we need to win. This puts it firmly in the “ongoing disaster we need to cure” camp, and so cost is no object.
I wonder if the reason there appears to be a contradiction is just that some policy-makers take prevention-type measures and create a framing of “ongoing disaster” around it, to make it look like a cure (and also to get it done).