Here the Study Group again touches most delicately upon a sore subject, no doubt to preserve its own, fragile consensus. The reason for the “limited role” played by the international community is, of course, the Bush administration’s insistence on rushing to war without building a consensus within the U.N. Nowhere in the report is there a real consideration of how the U.S. is to repair this wider damage to our international relations.

This paragraph is patently false, based on no discernible evidence. It reflects the fatal contradiction at the heart of our misadventure in Iraq, the gap between what we want to be true, and what is true. No country in the region should want a chaotic Iraq, just as everyone in Iraq should want a prosperous, peaceful democracy, with liberty and justice for all. It does no more good to insist on these sentiments that it would to say, for instance, that the Vietnamese should have surrendered to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, instead of sticking with communist totalitarianism and becoming the world’s sweatshop slaves. Even when we do know what is best for other people, it does no good to force it upon them.