If my backyard is festooned with hornet nests, I will likely be safer from a sting on any given day if I do nothing than I will be on the day or days I begin destroying them. Since when is any large, important, task required to show positive results at every stage? Declaring war on Japan increased the threat of war from Germany dramatically. And waging war on both countries, obviously, made things less safe for Americans in the short run.
Leaving aside that Goldberg's clumsy segue into a Japan analogy is just another way of eliding the difference between al Qaeda (who, like Japan, attacked us) and Iraq (who, unlike Japan, didn't), I'd suggest that, when confronted with evidence that one's hornet-destroying strategy has caused the tenfold increase of hornets' nests, there are probably wiser responses than simply declaring that "lots of things go badly until they go well," and then linking to one of your previous Simpsons jokes.
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