Iraq and the Conservative Crackup

[WillyT]

E. J. Dionne Jr.

Wider distribution and all that.

<snip>

It is this view that has made the columns of George Will, my conservative colleague, so powerful over the past few months. Will in no way sounds like a liberal in criticizing Bush's war in Iraq. "Conservatives are not supposed to be especially nice," he wrote recently. "They are bleak, flinty people given to looking facts in the face; hence, they are prone to pessimism." In this telling, the Iraq venture looks more like exporting the Great Society's community action program to Tikrit than a policy rooted in conservative realism.

But the neoconservatives who deeply believe in the purposes of this war are not happy either. They can't understand how the administration could botch such an essential project. Why, they ask, were more troops not sent to Iraq at the beginning to get the place under control? Why has there been such a reluctance to smash opposition to the American venture in Iraq, to "give victory a chance," as William Kristol wrote recently in the Weekly Standard?

The isolationist conservatives around Pat Buchanan cannot understand why we went to war in the first place -- and they opposed it from the beginning. These conservatives speak explicitly about the "costs of empire," much as the left does. They argue that globalism is really "globaloney" and that being an empire is incompatible with being a republic.

With the splits on Iraq exposed, other splits within conservatism become more obvious. Small-government conservatives feel ever more free to speak out against the large budget deficits over which Bush has presided. Anti-immigration conservatives speak out against the president's immigration policies. Pro-military conservatives criticize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dominion over the Pentagon, reflecting the views of many in the military brass who never much liked Rumsfeld or his plans.

<snip>

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5079-2004May31.html

The conservatives are gettin shaky.

The rePublicans are gettin concerned.

The bottom compartments of the ship of state are flooding.

Guess I should put another poll in the field soon, no???

:evilgrin: