If that were all that Will was saying, it would likely be disputed only by the left.
As I read it, though, it is not all that Will is saying.
"...Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson - one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job - about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies..."
Does this sound like a conservative who has realized the necessity of America taking on terrorists in their back yard... or a strange version of George Will of the last few years, who accepts as writ the idea that Iraq was a mistake?
Currently learning a lesson? The lesson we should have learned when the towers fell, was that the popular agenda of Bill Clinton to dismember the military, and respond to a number of opening assaults in this war, was to ignore the losses... as merely military poeple and embassy staff.
The lesson George Will needs to learn is that, though the media may repeat themselves endlessly... it doesn't make it true.
The idea that conservatives are being "taught a lesson", is straight out of Murtha's playbook.
Those who cannot tell the difference between Clintonian empire-building, and our present day Guadalcanal in Iraq, need to go back to the history books.
We are being taught a lesson because we took a play out of the liberals handbook...talk and more talk. Then we added a dash of appeasement. Will is right we should have already known and not needed on the job training.