Crush on Buckley

William F. Buckley Jr., the grand old man of the Grand Old Party, is hardly a chearleader for Bush's policies in Iraq. In a recent piece for National Review, Buckley offered some sober thoughts on the situation in that unhappy country:

... One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed...

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols...

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that
Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the
Americans....

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy....

Why do I love Bill Buckley? The man is an unapologetic conservative - some of his editorials from the 1960s are rather embarrassing today. But Buckley has never been an apologist for any president or policy. He is committed to conservative political principles and not to the conservative political establishment. Personally, I always prefer an ideologue to a hack. Although he is no longer at the helm at National Review, his spirit still infuses the magazine, which is probably why NR is still so fun to read.

- Adrian Bleifuss Prados