{"id":6521,"date":"2014-06-25T16:53:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T20:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=6521"},"modified":"2014-07-14T19:15:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T23:15:35","slug":"pat-buchanan-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/pat-buchanan-right-6521","title":{"rendered":"Pat Buchanan Was Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

By W. James Antle III, Editor, The Daily Caller<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of the people you now see on your television offering advice about what to do next in Iraq weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The United States overestimated the threat from Saddam Hussein in 2003,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d David Frum acknowledges in 2014. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Without an active nuclear-weapons program, he was not a danger beyond his immediate vicinity. That war cost this country dearly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the war pundits\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 flawed track record is understandable. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rarely do wars, once begun, work out as anticipated,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wrote Pat Buchanan on the eve of the Iraq war.<\/p>\n

But some people anticipated more than others. Buchanan predicted the initial invasion would go well. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153An 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,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he observed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And Iraqi ground forces cannot long resist Abrams tanks that can guarantee the kill of an Iraqi armored vehicle with every shell fired.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What would it profit America to march to Baghdad,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153only to have Cairo fall to anti-American mobs?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

After the Muslim Brotherhood interlude in Egypt, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no longer an open question.<\/p>\n

Of war with Iraq, Buchanan asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how can Iran not be the beneficiary?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He argued, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153By eliminating the counterweight to Iranian domination, we guaranteed that either we become that counterweight, or there is none.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, for which we were warned the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153smoking gun\u00e2\u20ac\u009d might be a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mushroom cloud,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan maintained \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there is serious doubt Saddam is close to a nuclear weapon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

If Iraq was complicit in the 9\/11 terrorist attacks on America, Buchanan reasoned, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Saddam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regime should be destroyed and the pounding not stop until he is dead or gone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the absence of such evidence, however, the United States should stay out.<\/p>\n

For saying things many Iraq war supporters would now concede were true, Buchanan was lumped in with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unpatriotic Conservatives.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Nor did Buchanan play Pollyanna on the subject of withdrawal. He called U.S. troops \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the most effective, if not the only reliable, units preventing all-out sectarian civil war and defending the government, the contractors, the aid workers and the Green Zone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If we draw them down, how secure will the Americans left behind, and the friends of America, be in Iraq?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan asked, later inquiring, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how will ending the surge and pulling out those troops cool, rather than unleash, the passions for killing?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Hard to argue with much of this now.<\/p>\n

Buchanan is popularly known as a reactionary, a culture warrior who pines for the social mores of the 1950s. (He would likely plead guilty as charged.) So how is it that he is so often ahead of the curve \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or at least ahead of his critics?<\/p>\n

Does anyone now doubt, as Buchanan was among the first conservatives to argue, that mass immigration has made the electoral map much more difficult for the Republican Party than it was in the heyday of Nixon and Reagan?<\/p>\n

After Mitt Romney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defeat in 2012, Real Clear Politics elections analyst Sean Trende suggested the Republican Party could potentially win again by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abandoning some of its more pro-corporate stances.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Trende continued, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This GOP would have to be more \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAmerica first\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on trade, immigration and foreign policy; less pro-Wall Street and big business in its rhetoric; more Main Street\/populist on economics.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Who does that sound like?<\/p>\n

Buchanan was also among the first conservatives to worry about the stagnant wages of working-class Americans…<\/p>\n

Read the full column at : The Daily Caller…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By W. James Antle III, Editor, The Daily Caller Many of the people you now see on your television offering advice about what to do next in Iraq weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t terribly prescient the first time around. They or their bosses thought the war likelier to last six days or six weeks … <\/p>\n

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