From conservative author Rod Dreher, of National Review and the Dallas Morning News, on a broadcast essay at NPR:
“As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
“But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool....
“The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me....
“I turn 40 next month — middle aged at last — a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.
“I did not expect Vietnam.
“As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
“I had a heretical thought for a conservative — that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word — that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot — that they have to question authority.”
Thanks to Glenn Greenwald, who found and transcribed this.
