Can you believe George Will wrote this?

[MISSDem]

When late in the spring of 1940 people of southeastern England flocked across the Channel in their pleasure craft and fishing boats to evacuate soldiers trapped on Dunkirk beaches, euphoria swept Britain. So Prime Minister Winston Churchill sternly told the nation: "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations."

Or by curfews, such as the one that cooled the furies that engulfed Iraq after the bombing last week of a Shiite shrine. Wars are not won simply by facing facts, but facing them is a necessary prerequisite.
Interesting stuff...
Rhetoric of Unreality
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101935.html

[MADem]

1. For some odd reason, your link only showed up when I hit reply

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101935.html

The old chickenshit apologist doesn't sound too sanguine, does he?

Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on its constitution, Iraq barely has a government....Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the Wall Street Journal, reports that Shiite militias "have broken up coed picnics, executed barbers and liquor store owners, instituted their own courts, and posted religious guards in front of girls' schools to ensure Iranian-style dress." Iraq's other indispensable man, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, says that unless the government can protect religious sites, "the believers will."...

In the New Republic, Lawrence Kaplan, writing with a Baghdad dateline, says that only U.S. forces, which "have become an essential part of the landscape here -- their own tribe, in effect," can be "an honest broker" between warring factions, "more peacekeeper than belligerent." But he also reports:

"With U.S reconstruction aid running out, Iraq's infrastructure, never fully restored to begin with, decays by the hour. . . . The level of corruption that pervades Iraq's ministerial orbit . . . would have made South Vietnam's kleptocrats blush. . . . orruption has helped drive every public service measure -- electricity, potable water, heating oil -- down below its prewar norm."

.....Today, with all three components of the "axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- more dangerous than they were when that phrase was coined in 2002, the country would welcome, and Iraq's political class needs to hear, as a glimpse into the abyss, presidential words as realistic as those Britain heard on June 4, 1940.

[existentialist]

2. Yes, and I read the whole article at the WP site

When George Will isn't busy being a partisan hack, he occasionally appears as if he were actually searching for reality.

However, you will note that he he attempting to persuade the Bush Administration to face realities, not explicitly attacking them for their failure to do so.

[acmejack]

3. The only thing I like about George is his vocabulary

The man has a fantastic command of the language.