If Kerry wins, the American people will have spoken definitively, and for all time so far as I am concerned. They will have, in effect, said, "We will not support pre-emptive wars or large-scale efforts to democratize other nations any longer. We simply haven't got the stomach for what's required."

Because let's face it: by any rational measure, the Iraq war has gone better than any operation of its type and scale has ever gone in history. And yet the piddling cost and the incredible work of our people is now routinely viewed as a disaster. The press is content merely to report the negative, without any rational or historical context, and the American people are (apparently) content to let them get away with it.

And that's okay. If that's what the American people want, it's what they want. If anyone proposes such a task in the future, I'll simply say "Look to the Iraq war. It will end in disaster because the press will only report failure and death and excuse that with phony mealy-mouthed claims of "objectivity," and within a year or two the American people will go wobbly. It's just who we are as a people."