Despite his strident ad-homineming and strawmanning and general nonsequituring for the Bush/Cheney 04 ticket, George Will finally swallows a bitter draught of stupid ugly reality. He writes:
>Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a “senior administration official,” insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:
>”The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren’t for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It’s like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn’t work.”
>This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike “the law enforcement approach,” does “work.”
Maybe Mr.Will should should tell his colleague David Brooks, who lampooned Kerry’s claim that terrorism was a law-enforcement problem.
i hate to give any credit to mr. will, but he has hit upon what i think is an important distinction between the war on terror, which began prior to the current administration and will continue beyond it, and the war in iraq, which represents a woeful failure by an overreaching executive. will also carried this torch, much to his own apparent chagrin, on “this week with george stephanopoulos”–and he made the point well and even recommended that the dems take it up as a platform plank in refutation of the old Rove standby that Dems can’t or won’t protect the country.will is not exactly a monochromatic leopard here, but at least he has learned the power of some occassional magnanimity.
Yes, sadly he hit on it 5 years too late. I haven’t gone back to do the research on this, but I don’t seem to recall Will being a vocal critic of the war at the outset–he certainly wasn’t a cheerleader like Krauthammer, but I don’t remember him being quite so ummmmm Kerry-esque. Interesting to see the softpedaling among the pundits. I’d be interested to see FAIR or someone do a survey of the “swinging with the wind” members of the punditocracy. But, perhaps my memory of Will’s columns from several years ago is failing.
just a quick search, but here’s some stuff from 2004. again, much like you guessed, not really much of a position, other than to bemoan the plight of hius imaginied contingency of “conservatives.” He also wrote a piece in 2003, which i can’t seem to locate, that praised the Bush administration’s “continuing marginilzation of the UN,” or something like that. damn the Post and their sunscription b@llsh#t. At any rate:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9781-2004Aug17.html
http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/001630.php
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_can_we_make_iraq.html
aha, where there’s a will, there’s a way–no pun intended. here is the decidedly hawky will, a marked departure from the mildly apologetic one we heard this week:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18071-2003Mar12.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38030-2003Jul23.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A18071-2003Mar12¬Found=true
Phil, the third link in your last post, Will’s scathing diatribe against the UN and France, is damning evidence toward Will’s flip-floppery.
On another note, I have been perusing the forums on other watchdog sites (MMFA and Think Progress), and have been hearing general support for Will’s claims, and for Will himself, as a true-blooded old fashioned conservative. Many are expressing longings for the “good-old days” when liberals and conservatives could have reasonable discussions about politics and see eye to eye on many issues. My question for them is “When was this time?” During Reagan? My ass. IMO these historically-challenged individuals need to dig a little and recall Will’s general encouragement and defense of Bush’s policies up until Bush’s now dessicated approval rating dipped below 30%. The last true “conservative” regime to hold the oval office was the Eisenhower administration. Many of this nation’s elderly still think this is what Republicans stand for.
i don’t know if its so much suppport for will as appreciation of his newfound candor in digressing from his formerly hawkish ways. public intellectuals need to be afforded the opportunity to recant, just so long as it appears rational and non-habitual. with will’s current repenting for his myopic pre-war posturing, time will tell if it springs from the former, but i don’t think we’ll ever suspect him of the latter.