In the run-up to March 2003, there were respectable cases to be made for and against the Iraq war. Nothing that happened at Haditha alters either argument. And, if you're one of the ever swelling numbers of molting hawks among the media, the political class and the American people for whom Haditha is the final straw, that's not a sign of your belated moral integrity but of your fundamental unseriousness.
RTWT, but it ends thus:
A superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn't deserve to.
I don't think it will come to that, but if it should happen that we lose heart and abandon the Iraqis (again), I wonder whether it would ever again be moral for a U.S. President to send troops into battle? Because such a move would signal to me that the Press can and will always bring down any war effort. If the press makes war unwinnable, it wouldn't be moral to fight, right?
