[Torie]

Buckley fails to present alternative postulates, or what the alternative end game entails. He is being lazy again, and unwilling to tackle the tough choices. He just jotted this thing down in about 10 minutes as a diversion from his ennui.

[Petronski]

...as a diversion from his ennui.

LOL

[churchillbuff]

Opponents of the invasion warned in advance that there would be a civil war. Many freepers laughed or derided that warning. But the warning was based on a clear-eyed understanding that Iraq was an artificial construct of mutually-loathing populations. Saddam's brutality had kept them from warring with each other.

We've ousted Saddam, and a fundamentalist slate of pro-Iranian Shiites have replaced his government.

Was any of it -- the billion dollars a week of US tax money, the 2000-plus AMerican military deaths - necessary for the protection of American interests? No. Iraq didn't have WMDs, didn't have anything to do with 9-11, and with a 6th rate military, didn't pose a threat to the US.

What a waste. What a policy blunder. If we'd spent this kind of tax money on a dreamy domestic policy boondoggle, we'd all be calling it typical liberalism. That's what it is, actually, a big-government spending blunder.

[hummingbird]

Hafta' agree, Torie. To Mr. Buckley and to the complaining Iraqi:

....yada, yada, yada....

Did they think this monumental task would be completed by now? If so, their sense of history is very short-sighted. I'm surprised Mr. Buckley has taken such a myopic, and perhaps ethnocentric, view.

"Look at me, Mom...I just critiqued Mr. William F. Buckley's view on the situation in Iraq! Yee-haw!"

Mom will be so proud of me....?8^)

[txrangerette]

"He just jotted this thing down in about 10 minutes as a diversion from his ennui."

Possibly on the back of an envelope, eh? While travelling somewhere? But there's no other resemblance to Lincoln's masterpiece. Pity. When I was in college so long ago, I idolized Buckley.

[willyboyishere]

You nailed it---it is a lazy, cursory piece from a guy who did, after all, turn 80 last year.