Good for Rod Dreher

January 13, 2007 8:43 AM by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (Archive)

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.