Our political imagination of evil is impoverished, and nowhere is it more impoverished than in Iraq. Even today, when the blood of innocents flows so richly and regularly, we do not seem to grasp its origins, or its power. That is, we do not seem to grasp the centrality, and the perdurability, of culture. ~Marty Peretz

What is it about being an interventionist, whose preferred methods often include aggression, the killing of the innocent and generally obnoxious self-righteousness, that makes interventionists feel entitled to hold forth on the moral understanding of anything?  Certainly someone‘s political imagination of evil is impoverished if he still cannot see the injustice of this war, but it isn’t “our” imagination that fails.  What do people who cheered on the devastation of Lebanon (this was the one where Marty showed that he could use $.50 words and not know what they meant) have to say about the blood of innocents that is anything but extremely two-faced and dishonest?   

What is it about being an Iraq war supporter that allows the supporter to make sweeping generalisations about what “people” have recently discovered to be true or about what “we” have failed to understand, when it is invariably the supporters of the war who have only recently discovered the brutishness of fallen human nature or been late in recognising the centrality and “perdurability” of culture?  Why do they get away with foisting off their late discoveries on vague, general groups of people?  Why do they get to attribute their failures of imagination and understanding to an indeterminate “us”?