I think Goldstein's article is somewhat confused. Goldstein appears to think that something extraordinary has occurred, but we're not dealing with a unique case but an often-observed phenomenon: the government becomes involved in a war, and a significant number of supposed leaders or celebrities, who might have been expected to be in the anti-war camp, suddenly swing aboard the war bandwagon, to the shock of their erstwhile ideological confrères. This phenomenon could be observed in the lead-up to Vietnam, and in the cases of Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, as well as other similar excursions. At the time of Vietnam, I was given to understand by elderly anti-warriors, some of whom went back to the opposition to World War I, that it was nothing new to them either.
So if we're dealing with a regularly-observed phenomenon, and we like Occam's Razor, we don't want to multiply causes unnecessarily, such as adducing the peculiarities of the times or the persons involved. Of course each individual case is different, and is experienced differently by the individuals, who suddenly or slowly find the charms of war and imperial power irresistable; but if the phenomenon (as we observe) is not completely spontaneous and unpredictable, like certain atomic nuclei quantumistically popping off, but is rather regular and predictable, then its causes are not unique to any presently proposed imperial excursion, but are rather a feature of the observed system. That is, it's almost guaranteed that some people like Hitchens will suddenly wake up and decide they belong in the imperial camp, and if one is interested in the sources of their behavior, one would want to take a look at more than the immediate occasion.
-- Gordon