Conflict Among Conservatives
from today's Wall Street Journal (by subscription) Even some Republicans are losing heart about Iraq. But this response from the Administration is interesting, at least to me. COMMENTARY 'The Wrong Time to Lose Our Nerve' By PETER WEHNER April 4, 2006; Page A22 A small group of current and former conservatives -- including George Will, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Francis Fukuyama -- have become harsh critics of the Iraq war. They have declared, or clearly implied, that it is a failure and the president's effort to promote liberty in the Middle East is dead -- and dead for a perfectly predictable reason: Iraq, like the Arab Middle East more broadly, lacks the democratic culture that is necessary for freedom to take root. And so for cultural reasons, this effort was flawed from the outset. Or so the argument goes. Let me address each of these charges in turn. The war is lost: "Our mission has failed," Mr. Buckley wrote earlier this year. "[I]t seems very