bobbyw24
01-17-2010, 10:50 AM
Will’s Testament
The dean of conservative columnists turns to Robert Taft.
By W. James Antle III
As Barack Obama weighed his decision whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan, former Vice President Dick Cheney grew impatient. “The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger,” Cheney said. “It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.” Most conservative commentators cheered Cheney’s broadside, but George F. Will was not amused.
“A bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction,” Will said on ABC’s “This Week.” “For a representative of the Bush administration to accuse someone of taking too much time is missing the point. We have much more to fear in this town from hasty than from slow government action.” Thus the dean of Washington conservative columnists refused the helping of red meat being served up by the Spiro Agnew of our time, siding instead with a liberal Democratic president.
One might be tempted to conclude that Will has merely become the latest media figure to be starstruck by Obama, his onetime dining companion. The president has been known to send a thrill up grown men’s legs before. Except that when Obama decided he would dispatch 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan after all, Will was just as scathing: “George W. Bush waged preventive war in Iraq regarding (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction. Obama is waging preventive war in Afghanistan to prevent it from again becoming ‘a staging platform for terrorists,’ which Somalia, Yemen or other sovereignty near-vacuums also could become.”
Will argued in his syndicated column that to sustain such a commitment, “U.S. forces might have to be engaged in Afghanistan for decades before its government can prevent that by itself.” “The president’s party will not support his new policy, his budget will not accommodate it, our overstretched and worn down military will be hard-pressed to execute it, and Americans’ patience will not be commensurate with Afghanistan’s limitless demands for it,” he concluded. “This will not end well.”
http://amconmag.com/article/2010/feb/01/00008/
The dean of conservative columnists turns to Robert Taft.
By W. James Antle III
As Barack Obama weighed his decision whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan, former Vice President Dick Cheney grew impatient. “The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger,” Cheney said. “It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.” Most conservative commentators cheered Cheney’s broadside, but George F. Will was not amused.
“A bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction,” Will said on ABC’s “This Week.” “For a representative of the Bush administration to accuse someone of taking too much time is missing the point. We have much more to fear in this town from hasty than from slow government action.” Thus the dean of Washington conservative columnists refused the helping of red meat being served up by the Spiro Agnew of our time, siding instead with a liberal Democratic president.
One might be tempted to conclude that Will has merely become the latest media figure to be starstruck by Obama, his onetime dining companion. The president has been known to send a thrill up grown men’s legs before. Except that when Obama decided he would dispatch 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan after all, Will was just as scathing: “George W. Bush waged preventive war in Iraq regarding (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction. Obama is waging preventive war in Afghanistan to prevent it from again becoming ‘a staging platform for terrorists,’ which Somalia, Yemen or other sovereignty near-vacuums also could become.”
Will argued in his syndicated column that to sustain such a commitment, “U.S. forces might have to be engaged in Afghanistan for decades before its government can prevent that by itself.” “The president’s party will not support his new policy, his budget will not accommodate it, our overstretched and worn down military will be hard-pressed to execute it, and Americans’ patience will not be commensurate with Afghanistan’s limitless demands for it,” he concluded. “This will not end well.”
http://amconmag.com/article/2010/feb/01/00008/