(no subject)
Best political statement of the week, from George Will's latest column:
Conservatives are not supposed to be especially nice. They are bleak, flinty people given to looking facts in the face; hence they are prone to pessimism. But their competence supposedly compensates for their not being cuddly.
It is perhaps unfair to say that America's nation-builders are going about it incompetently. That suggests that there is somewhere a reservoir of nation-building competence. But many misadventures in Iraq would be more forgivable if they did not flow from an ideology.
Conservatives are not supposed to be especially nice. They are bleak, flinty people given to looking facts in the face; hence they are prone to pessimism. But their competence supposedly compensates for their not being cuddly.
It is perhaps unfair to say that America's nation-builders are going about it incompetently. That suggests that there is somewhere a reservoir of nation-building competence. But many misadventures in Iraq would be more forgivable if they did not flow from an ideology.