[Vision2020] Conservatives Against the War

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

This piece was written by Bruce Bartlett, a former official in the Reagan and Bush the Better administrations.

January 29, 2007,  5:44 pm, The New York Times
The Growing Chorus of Antiwar Conservatives

In many ways, the war in Iraq is looking more and more like the last days of the Vietnam War. It is becoming increasingly clear that the situation is hopeless and the administration’s strategy is incapable of achieving victory. Yet the president insists that additional resources can still turn the situation around. Although he has little credibility left, many continue to support him in some vain hope that the sacrifices of our soldiers can somehow be vindicated and given meaning.

But unlike in 1973 and 1974, when political conservatives rallied around President Nixon, growing numbers of those in the conservative intelligentsia have concluded that the war was wrong to begin with and is now unwinnable. Even as Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and other right-wing talk show hosts have, over the last year, loudly ratcheted up their support for the war, the number of conservative critics has been growing almost daily.

As long ago as June 2004, William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the National Review magazine, was quoted in The New York Times saying, “With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration a year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

By 2006, the voices of prominent conservatives pronouncing the war and its conduct to be deeply flawed were becoming a chorus. In April, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, told students at the University of South Dakota, “It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back and we have to recognize it.”

In June, John Derbyshire of National Review published a mea culpa in that magazine, calling the Iraq war “obviously a gross error.” He went on to say, “It’s a tough thing, to admit you were wrong. It’s way tough if you’re a big-name pundit with a reputation to preserve. For those of us down at the bottom of the pundit pecking order, the stakes aren’t so high. I, at any rate, am willing to eat some crow and say: I wish I had never given any support to this fool war.”