[Vision2020] Conservative Icon Willian F. Buckley Jr.:Iraq War A "Failure"

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=anN._IfoJo1M&refer=us

Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure'

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- 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.''

The 80-year-old Buckley is among a handful of prominent conservatives who
are criticizing the war. Asked who is to blame for what he deems a failure,
Buckley said, ``the president,'' adding that ``he doesn't hesitate to accept
responsibility.''

Buckley called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a longtime friend, ``a
failed executor'' of the war. And Vice President Dick Cheney ``was flatly
misled,'' Buckley said. ``He believed the business about the weapons of mass
destruction.''
Buckley, often called the father of contemporary conservatism in America,
articulated his beliefs in National Review magazine, which he founded in
1955. His conservatism calls for small government, low taxes and a strong
defense. Both Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater said they got their
inspiration from the magazine.

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.

While praising Bush as ``really a conservative,'' he was critical of the
president for allowing expansion of the federal government and never vetoing
a spending bill.
The president's ``concern has been so completely on the international scope
that he can be said to have neglected conservatism'' on the fiscal level,
Buckley said.
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Vision2020 Post by Ted Moffett
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