"A bit stunned" is the phrase Mark Steyn reserves for his analysis of a column, by William F. Buckley, Jr., on President Bush's policy in Iraq.
Yes, I saw it, too. Buckley's resistance to the Bush Doctrine is by far the easiest and worthwhile to read, mainly because of Buckley's natural equanimity and reflective writing style but also by virtue of the man's respect for the president.
That said, evidence abounds that physical exhaustion, a preferred contemporary subject of the founder of the modern American right, has left Buckley morally and intellectually resigned to the state of world affairs right now. The Buckley of today is not the Buckley of twenty years ago, which is a truism except for the sense of complaisance in Buckley's arguments; even his convictions. I own collections of "On the Right" from the late Seventies and early-to-mid-Eighties, and one would sooner have read a celebratory sonnet to Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker than a recommendation of the mediative services of any sitting Secretary-General of the United Nations — as Mr. Buckley did, goodness knows why, for Ban Ki-moon.