"This war was always different from those that have gone before. Previous conflicts in the modern age, even if usually caused by failures of deterrence, and even if they extended the power of the state, did at least have the virtue of being in British interests, because if we did not fight them we would be ruined, subjugated or fatally humbled. This one is so hard to justify that its supporters treat their own arguments with scorn, wanly grinding out cant phrases that long ago lost their meaning, trying to frighten us with bogeymen or pretending grotesquely that liberty and civilisation can be imposed on Mesopotamia with explosives.
"The idea that naked force can create human freedom is itself a left-wing idea. Even more socialist are the war faction's contempt for the sovereignty of nations and their unashamed belief that ends justify means. No wonder that the war's hottest-eyed supporters on both sides of the Atlantic are ex-Marxists who have lost their faith but have yet to lose their Leninist tendency to worship worldly power. Yet ranged alongside them are Tories who are supposed to stand for the gentler and more modest cause of faith and nation, Church and King."
<http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec6.html>
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