At certain intervals the far left produces claims about the war or this country or life in general that offend reason, and those on the right have a choice between ignoring what is said because it has already been confuted; or addressing a statement rationally, but strictly to apprise onlookers of its invalidity. This is burdensome, as it might be if you and I were about to design a car, when you went and drafted squarish blocks on the axles instead of wheels. On Friday, a friend was one of several asking a question: "What sort of citizen — what sort of human being would prefer that their country lose a war in which so much is at stake?"

Take someone who believes that 1) all nations are at moral parity; 2) all governments, even illiberal ones, have either as much or more legitimacy than the first fruits of common law, the United States or the United Kingdom; 3) all wars are the result of petty disagreements between obstinate people; 4) terrorists and other violent actors are normal citizens who are pushed, by injustice, beyond desperation. They will view events of today not as an intensifying struggle between a democratic First World and a brutal Third World that is paradoxically strengthened by accomplishments of the First World, but as a chamber full of countries anthropomorphized into legates who have "the same wants and needs." Not the people, mind you; the countries themselves.

Operation Enduring Freedom, therefore, is viewed strictly in terms of crime and punishment; sentence carried out with the removal of the Taliban. Iraq, before Operation Iraqi Freedom, is thought to have been harassed for twelve years after it capitulated in 1991. No religion-studded, transnational fascist movement is remotely conceivable from within this mindset; let alone quiescent threats from China or Russia or other despot states. No, the only problem is the obstreperous United States.