Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

William F. Buckley is one of the smartest men in America. He is a 
conservative's conservative, the founder of National Review. He has twice 
the IQ of our present president, is deeply experienced, widely respected, 
and dependably enlightening. So I am disappointed to find him here 
unwilling to reveal his personal views on how we should end our occupation 
of Iraq. I expected him to be a leader, not a follower. Loyalty stretched 
thin is a sad and demeaning thing. I am reminded of another excellent 
writer, Wendell Berry, and his apologia for tobacco farmers.

Leadership character is critical. We must burn into our brains this dilemma 
of being in the untenable position of continuing immense loss of citizens 
and treasury because a president made a bad decision and stubbornly refuses 
to admit it. We can only hope that those who don't vote because they say, 
"it doesn't really matter who is president," will make the connection.

As the holocaust victims' progeny instruct, great tragedies require ongoing 
attendance. We have had our Vietnam. Now we have our Iraq. Will the lesson 
be learned?

January 14, 2005, 1:35 p.m.

Thinking Out Iraq

To withdraw, or not?

A wise young thing writes provocatively. He wants to know when the serious 
right wing in America — National Review, and critical legislators and 
commentators — is going to come out and say what he thinks, that we were 
wrong to go into Iraq.

At a dinner meeting in New York last week of fourteen urbane and weighty 
conservatives, the host asked the question, How many of you would have 
voted to go into Iraq if circumstances were as advertised? The vote in 
favor of intervention was unanimous. The next question was, "Given what we 
now know, are you glad that we intervened?" The vote here was pretty well 
split, in the neighborhood of 50-50. My young correspondent puts it this 
way, "I rue my earlier support for the invasion." And goes on to ask, “When 
will we hear on the question from you — from senior U.S. analysts on the 
conservative side of the fence?”

He is pretty withering in his language. He writes about National Review: 
"To the extent that one can discern NR’s position, it is something like 
'Bush should keep doing whatever it is that he's been doing so far and hope 
for the best.' But for how long? At what point can we call the Iraq venture 
a success (or a failure) and leave, NR doesn't say. The editors seem to be 
saying, 'Get back to us in a month; maybe by then we'll have made up our 
minds.'"

His demands are quite direct. "It is amazing that NR cannot establish any 
criteria for when it would be appropriate to leave Iraq." It is 
understandable that he should end, "My gloom gathers daily."

Professor Harvey Mansfield was at the dinner meeting, and that learned 
powerhouse, in his characteristically soft-spoken way, wondered that so 
little attention was being paid, by restive conservatives, "to the matter 
of honor." Honor is an obligation enforced by integrity. Question: Was the 
retreat from Vietnam dishonorable?

Answer: Yes.

Would a retreat from Iraq be dishonorable?

Implied answer:Yes.

But attenuation sets in. At a point in 1961, President Charles de Gaulle 
reasoned that the French government had done as much as could reasonably be 
expected of it to enforce the sovereignty of the French state and guarantee 
the safe survival of its citizens in Algeria. If one acknowledges that, in 
human action, prudence can sometimes trump honor, and go even further to 
say that it should do so, then the question before the house is: When? And 
is it possible to explicate what are the relevant criteria? Is it true, as 
my correspondent writes, that "no modern state has ever succeeded in 
suppressing a guerrilla movement when there is some degree of popular 
support? The French in Algeria, the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, the 
Russians in Chechnya, the Japanese in China, the British in Ireland, and 
the U.S. in Vietnam have all tried it and failed."

Of course it is a responsibility of conservatives, associated with the 
ascendancy of President Bush, to weigh the consequences of tergiversation. 
What concerns a proud nation is not only moral obligations, but the 
consequences of a failure to stand by them. In another perspective, to 
bargain with the criminal is not only to temporize with dishonor, but also 
to embolden the criminal in his powers to threaten and to intimidate and to 
extort.

Such considerations argue in the abstract for seeing it through in Iraq. 
But they do not advise us when the moment should come to say that honor has 
to give way to a recognition that success is not in sight and not at any 
point in the future predictable.

Only Bush, not his critics, can coalesce these considerations. This isn't 
merely because he has up-to-date information. It is that the force of the 
leader is required in order to escape the conundrum with confidence. What 
my correspondent torments himself with in his sleep — How can we keep it 
up? The Iraqis have made it impossible to succeed. We accomplish nothing 
more than a directer display, day by day, of the bootlessness of our 
venture — only Bush can bestride, as De Gaulle did his own impasse. The 
force of any argument for disconnection requires the prestige and dominance 
of the leader. There is no point in arguing for withdrawal, unless Mr. Bush 
beckons us to do so.

*   *   *
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200501141335.asp