Buckley Agains Calls Iraq – And By Extension Bush – A Failure
William F. Buckley is not backing off of his pessimism re: Iraq:
William F. Buckley Jr., the longtime conservative writer and leader, said George W. Bush’s presidency will be judged entirely by the outcome of a war in Iraq that is now a failure.
“Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,” Buckley said in an interview that will air on Bloomberg Television this weekend. “If he’d invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn’t get him out of his jam.”
Buckley said he doesn’t have a formula for getting out of Iraq, though he said “it’s important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure.”
I remain somewhat mystified as to why Buckley thinks Iraq is irretrievably lost – certainly, things are grim, but Buckley is throwing in the towel far too quickly. Perhaps his negativity can be explained by an innate hostility towards the neoconservative view of foreign affairs:
In the interview, Buckley criticized the so-called neo- conservatives who enthusiastically embraced the Iraq invasion and the spreading of American values around the world.
“The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country,” Buckley said.
Also of interest is Buckley’s view of three other presidents of fairly recent vintage:
– Richard Nixon “was one of the brightest people who ever occupied the White House,” he said, “but he suffered from basic derangements,” which precipitated his own downfall.
– Ronald Reagan “confounded the intellectual class, which disdained him.” Every year though, Buckley said, “there is more and more evidence of his ingenuity, of his historical intelligence.”
– Bill Clinton “is the most gifted politician of, certainly my time,” Buckley said. “He generates a kind of a vibrant goodwill with a capacity for mischief which is very, very American.” He doubted that “anyone could begin to write a textbook that explicates his (Clinton’s) political philosophy because he doesn’t really have one.”
Certainly when a man of Buckley’s erudition and wisdom speaks, we’d do well to listen. I’m just not sure what we’re listening for, in this instance, since Buckley seems perplexed as to a policy on Iraq that would work. With all the water under the bridge, and the benefit of hindsight, we surely made colossal blunders in immediate post-war Iraq – but it would seem to me that we’re on a pretty intelligent course now. We have to get the militias under control, though…but more on that another time…
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