Just like Hook: Old. Used Up. Done For.

William F. Buckley, the scion of the Conservative movement and founder of National Review, recently wrote an article titled: It Didn't Work. He contends in this short essay that we have failed in Iraq.

The conservative movement, thankfully, is based on principles and logic and is not a cult of personality.

Buckley, old boy east coast elitist to the bone, subscribes to the theory that the little brown people should be left alone to slaughter each other at will as long as we get our oil. This was the “benign neglect” aspect of foreign policy that held through every administration up to 9-11 and President Bush.

If you read President Bush’s speeches you’ll understand that he completely busted that paradigm and has been turning the enormous ship of state ever since. No longer shall we, the U.S., operate on the benign neglect policy.

Buckley doesn’t like that. He is like Hook on Peter Pan: Old. Used Up. Done For. Let the croc of irrelevancy swallow him up, because conservatives today understand that in order to conserve our very nation we are going to have to kick some ass and change some countries around.

The process is well on its way. The Iraqi people have rejected a civil war after the Askariya shrine in Samarra was bombed. There was a great deal of unrest, but the enemy wanted an all out collapse. They didn't get it.

William F. Buckley is not a leftist; far from it. He is simply old, used up, and done for. The world has passed him by and he is not willing to change to meet it. My father, who is older than Mr. Buckley and speaks without that hideous effete accent, is still vibrant, growing, changing and young. He recently gave up his decades-long subscription to National Review Magazine. "It just seems tired and bitter," he said to me.

I've met leftists who are in their twenties who are exhausted, bitter, angry and depressed. They also see the world is passing them by and they are unwilling to change. They cling to a philosophy which is stale and dead.

How sad that Mr. Buckley is one of those. But "Tomorrow is another day," as Scarlett O'Hara would say, and we can always hope that Mr. Buckley wakes up tomorrow and gets out of bed like my Dad; creaky, sometimes grumpy, but with a sense of purpose, optimism, and cheer.

Never, never Old. Used Up. Or Done For.