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I cannot think of anything he had to gain by making
such an acknowledgement but my belief is that he was
more concerned about the integrity of the process than
what Bush and his supporters thought of him. Thus the
worm began to turn regarding my view of Pat Buchanan,
a man I had up until that point felt was an ultra-conservative
nut job.
Since then “Bully” Pat, as a buddy of mine
likes to call him, has written several articles for
conservative outlets like WorldNetDaily.com
railing against the neo-cons and their agendas.
In a March 24, 2003 column for The American Conservative
titled “Whose War?” Mr. Buchanan outlined
how, “A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare
our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s
interest.”
In that article he reveals that, “On Sept. 20,
(2001) forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to
the White House instructing President Bush on how the
war on terror must be conducted… (The) letter
was an ultimatum. To retain the signers’ support,
the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for
destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they
refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam.
Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush,
‘will constitute an early and perhaps decisive
surrender in the war on international terrorism.’”
He went on to add, “Here was a cabal of intellectuals
telling the Commander-in-Chief, nine days after an attack
on America, that if he did not follow their war plans,
he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet,
Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11.”
Now while this may be old news to those who have been
paying attention what has made me an even bigger fan
of Pat Buchanan these days is his bulldog determination
to be the voice of reason on the conservative side.
This week he was a guest on MSNBC’s Hardball
with Chris Matthews and then a guest host Scarborough
Country the following evening.
On Hardball Buchanan declared, “(This) was clearly
not a war of necessity. It‘s war of choice…
The neoconservatives have this agenda of democratic
imperialism and it can‘t work. If you‘re
an empire, you go in and dictate and you win. And it‘s
the definition of a superpower, when you commit to a
war, you win it. Our reputation as a superpower is on
the line now….The stakes are more than Vietnam.”
As impressive as his showing on Hardball was the next
night when he guest hosted Scarborough Country there
was absolutely extraordinary as he actually tag teamed
with Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill
Clinton, to press neocon defender Ann Coulter on where
the war was going and why the President has been unable
to articulate an exit strategy.
PAT BUCHANAN: “Ann, let me say, I happen to agree
with Robert Reich on this. Look, I do think the country
needs answers to some questions. Suppose, after we turn
over power on the 30(th) and then they hold elections
that the people who win the elections are radical Shiites,
a lot of them are radical Sunnis, who run on the proposition
that we‘re going to tell the Americans to get
out of the country. Do we then get out if that side
wins the election? And how long, in terms of blood and
treasure and the rest of it, do we spend in Iraq to
build a democracy when it does not look like right now
the people that want a democracy are willing to fight
quite as hard as those who would like to get us out
of there?”
ANN COULTER: “I think the point is this is going
to be hard. It‘s going to take a long time. But
it‘s something that absolutely has to be done.”
BUCHANAN: “Why?”
COULTER: “We need an Arab Israel over there.
We can‘t keep pimping for Israel. We need a puppet
government. We need to be on the ground. We need a friendly
government. We need democracy.”
Correction, Ms. Coulter, what the neocons in the Bush
Administration need as an outcome is a “democratic”
puppet government in Iraq otherwise everything that
has been done up to this point has been a complete waste
of time, resources and lives.
Coulter seemed somewhat caught off guard by the double
team
And one can imagine a phone call must have been placed
afterward to the show’s regular host asking what
the hell is going on when a neocon can’t get any
support on a conservative themed “shout”
show.
Showing her true colors, Coulter recovered to remind
the audience that a Democrat has never won a war, forgetting
of course that there were Democrats in the Oval Office
at both the beginning and the end of World War II.
The most intriguing comment of the evening however
belonged to Colonel David Hackworth who said to Buchanan,
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if you were
President.”
As unsavory as that idea was in 2000, I think the Colonel
is probably right.
Right now Pat Buchanan is the neo-cons worst enemy,
a conservative with the guts to ask “why?”
He is also a symbol of a growing problem for the Bush
Administration going into the election and that is a
growing number of conservatives with middle class values
who feel their country has been high-jacked by a neocon
cabal that does not have the their best interests, or
this country’s best interests, at heart.
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