So I first read Pat Buchanan’s piece on LRC this morning, in which he seems to have finally turned a corner and decided that Bush should admit his errors on Iraq. “Stay the Course” is not enough, Pat says. The president should examine his heart to decided whether “the cost to America is so great that we must get out and risk the awful consequences of a mistaken war that we should never have launched.”

Hmm, good thoughts. Is Buchanan finally coming around (we ask for the 10,000 time)?

Then I turn to the LRC blog to see that Thomas Woods linked a transcript of Pat’s interview with Tom, but before that interview appears, Pat engages in some televised banter with some military people, and says the following concerning whether the president ought to apologize and pull out the troops. Keep in mind that this was just a few days ago:

I don’t think the president ought to go forward and apologize. I really don’t. I think he ought to say, look, this is — what we planned on clearly did not work out. What we anticipated hasn’t happened. That’s the nature of war, but we do need this. We do need that. I want you to stay the course, frankly, very much the way Richard Nixon did in November of 1969, when he rallied the silent majority to stand behind him. I think he has got to do it. Do you think our Army is large enough or we need more troops?

And then he underscores the point that the US must stay the course:

I don’t believe, even those of us who oppose the war, thinks we can turn around now and walk out, say, sorry, it was a mistake or you’ve got to solve your own problem, because we fear it would be a disaster for this country and its interests and it would throw down the sewer everything these fellows fought for. And there is a chance something good can come out of this.

And then, he goes further to bait a guest to say that the media is somehow undermining the war effort by being negative:

Do you think the reporters are doing what they are alleged to have done in Vietnam, which is report such negativism that they undermine morale in the United States?

So Buchanan is either making some sense, or he is an awful warmonger who wants the president to lie more, bamboozle the people, increase the troops, and gag the media. Kerry never flipfloped as much as this.

I find the whole game of Buchanan Watch tedious, actually. Buchanan should not be seen as just an entertainer; he should be held accountable for his words, and there are more than enough of those over a lifetime of commentary that demonstrate that he is a spokesman for the American nationalist state and not American liberty.

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