"We are governed by fools"

John Derbyshire at the conservative blog site The Corner laments:

There are some spectacles that are at once tragic and farcical. One such has been the sight of Georgian troops scuttling back from assisting us in whatever it is we imagine we are doing in Iraq, to help defend their homeland, while Condoleezza Rice stamps her foot, George W. Bush watches a basketball game, and John McCain says that he will do such things, what they are, yet he knows not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.

We are governed by fools. At least Putin knows what he wants, and how to get it. If only freedom had such leaders!

Always interesting to watch grandiose internecine battles being played out between the different elements of the conservative camp. I think it's a testament to the Bush administration's sheer political power in the early 2000s that they were able to steer the nation onto the radical and reckless course of world-domination-for-democracy over the objections of liberals and a large swath of conservatives (the so-called "foreign policy realists" of the George H.W. school).