"Buckley must really be getting senile. President Bush's speech was crystal clear: It's open season on the bad guys, and we're going to roll them back like no one's business."
That's not it. Buckley understood the speech, like Noonan. They didn't LIKE it. There exists a division within American conservatism, between those some call the "neoconservatives" and the "traditional" conservatives (including "paleo-" conservatives). Traditional conservatives never liked "nation building", thinking it not realistic. Neoconservatives think that it is the only realistic way to have peace in the long term.
Traditional conservatives have been sniping at the "Neocons" in the Bush Administration for a long time: Rumsfeld and Cheney, mutedly, Wolfowitz more openly (because he is politically expendable).
Traditional conservatives could always paint George Bush as being much more of a middle-of-the-road conservative, being pushed further to the Neoconservative side because of the weight of so many advisors.
With this speech, which Bush operatives say the President has planned for a month, Bush just squarely and specifically declared that he, personally, is a Neocon, that he himself, personally, believes in nation building.
Traditional conservatives do not like that, at all, because it means that the Republican Party itself is a ship being intentionally steered by its captain into waters they think are full of shoals. So they are expressing their frustration. President Bush is himself, personally, unambiguously a Neocon, and American policy is going to be Neoconservative - full stop - for the next four years. Traditional conservatives have to decide whether they are going to quietly oppose the policies of their party, or grudgingly accept the new party line, which Bush just unambiguously declared and underlined three times. Buckley, and even Limbaugh, have to decide whether to divide their party or to support a policy of intentional, overt nationbuilding which they have long opposed.
My bet is that they will grumble and grouse, per Noonan's and Buckley's articles, but go along. What choice do they have?
Excellent choice and my reply to you was going to be--wht choice do we have? We can't divide the party. We can't let these lunatics back in power.
Before 9/11, the paleocons were right. Nation building was a foolish, unnecessary exercise that for eight years was simply a means of distracting the public from Bill Clinton's foibles.
But on 9/11, it became abundantly clear that old ideology would no longer serve us. We simply can't let mini-hitlers around the world foment hatred for America, fund, and train that hatred until it erupts in massive terrorist attacks.
In the new world, the little ayatollahs, muftis, grand shamans engaging in that sort of behavior will be dealt with. Kadaffi has already gotten the message and realized that he really does not want Uncle Sam coming to reform him.
While it will be bloody and politically unpopular, we probably need to direct our attention at Iran and Syria next, perhaps even North Korea. China and Russia aren't on that list because they simply are not the same animal. They aren't insane with bloodlust no matter the cost.
I don't like this. I don't relish the cost in lives and treasure. But simply ignoring the terrorists just encourages them to keep upping the ante.
During the 2000 presidential debates, Bush clearly said that he did not believe in nation building, "...I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building.". So what is this change of heart about? Did Bush decide, in the wake of 911, that Gore was right? Was Gore a Neocon all along and Bush only a recent convert? If this were Kerry, we would call it a flip-flop. But its Bush, so we read into it what we want.