Buckley is getting old. Some weaken with age, some don't. It's sad though.
This wouldn't be the first time that Buckley was wrong. Bush has a much longer-term view. Iraq will not be won or lost in his term.
It's little bill.
Maybe I'm wrong, but sometime about ten years ago a dear friend of WFB got sick and died and somehow it came out that he was "gay" and Buckley bit his lip and eulogized him all the same and somewhere in that slow, staccato, stuttering march of arch and curve that makes up the unmistakable voice of one who speaks for God himself before the world, an epiphany worked its worming way under the depths of an otherwise inpenetrable palisade alongside the man who thought he trod on gilded walk; a crack appeared, and the carefully crafted path gave way.
Buckley knows less than he thinks he knows. He has never been quite sure that the other Yalies might not be right.
I agree. Whatever credit Buckley deserves for energizing the modern conservative movement, I'm afraid age has softened his head, much as it did Barry Goldwater's.
I hope I don't go squishy like that when I get to be a geezer. But there may be physical changes in our minds that are beyond our control.
It is far too soon to "acknowled[ge] defeat." And what does Buckley have to say of positive developments spun off of our invasion Iraq? Such as Libya's giving up its nuclear weapons program?
(Is Buckley even aware that Libya's SECRETLY produced nuclear weapons components have all been dismantled and shipped to Tennessee? And if he is aware, does he think this would ever have happened without our having invaded Iraq?)