> Java does just fine without goto (or have they added that since 2010?).
C++ is quite literally meant for use cases where Java (or Python or C# or Go or pretty much any other language) is not "just fine". And as I mentioned above, you CAN get by without goto. You just have to go through (go to?) contortions in certain cases without it that make the situation worse rather than better. (And there is no reason to believe such use cases are equally common across all languages, so keep that in mind. For example hardware contexts require dealing with explicit state machines a lot more than software contexts do, and C/C++ are used more in those contexts—to name just one example.) Remember Java was doing "just fine" without lambdas, and it's still doing "just fine" without templates, value types, manual memory management, and a million other things you find in C++. Even C was also doing "just fine" without generics and destructors, but then they realized they're missing out and finally added it.
You have to realize, goto is basically a religion nowadays. People want to believe goto has no legitimate use cases, because (I can only assume) they're scared someone will use it as an excuse to utilize it irresponsibly outside those contexts. Kind of like why some drugs require prescriptions, I guess. I can't stop people from believing what they want, but as far as facts go, it does have use cases that many people simply don't encounter, and I tried to list some of them in my comments above.
> Minor nit: you can't use static_cast to cast away constness.
You actually can! Check this out:
int const b = 1;
int const *p = &b;
**static_cast(static_cast(static_cast(&p))) = 2;
assert(p == &b && *p == 2);
If this is surprising... I would take it as an indication that it's difficult to foresee what can be done even with the commonplace features in the language (in both good and bad directions), let alone the rare ones (like goto).