I think this is a refreshing change of pace. This would have never been printed on a Conservative website in 2003.:
Many of the people you now see on your television offering advice about what to do next in Iraq weren’t terribly prescient the first time around. They or their bosses thought the war likelier to last six days or six weeks than six months. They feared a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein.
“The United States overestimated the threat from Saddam Hussein in 2003,” David Frum acknowledges in 2014. “Without an active nuclear-weapons program, he was not a danger beyond his immediate vicinity. That war cost this country dearly.”
Perhaps the war pundits’ flawed track record is understandable. “Rarely do wars, once begun, work out as anticipated,” wrote Pat Buchanan on the eve of the Iraq war.
But some people anticipated more than others. Buchanan predicted the initial invasion would go well. “An Iraqi air defense, unable to shoot down a single U.S. plane in 40,000 sorties in ten years, cannot long withstand U.S. air power that can deliver 1,000 smart bombs and cruise missiles on target each day,” he observed. “And Iraqi ground forces cannot long resist Abrams tanks that can guarantee the kill of an Iraqi armored vehicle with every shell fired.”
The occupation, however, would be another story. And instead of washing in a tidal wave of liberal democracy across the region, Buchanan warned a prolonged campaign in Iraq might empower anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Israel political forces.
“What would it profit America to march to Baghdad,” he asked, “only to have Cairo fall to anti-American mobs?”
After the Muslim Brotherhood interlude in Egypt, it’s no longer an open question.
If only more people, like this man, realized that Pat Buchanan was right. Maybe Dick Cheney would have to find a new career.