As I write this, in safety half a world away, oil fields blaze in southern Iraq, tanks race through the desert towards Baghdad and the first bodies are returning home for burial. It is a moment that confirms the worst fears of those who opposed the war, and encourages those who support the war to pray for a swift victory.
In ordering troops to cross the Iraqi border, President Bush and Tony Blair have themselves crossed into the dark and unfamiliar terrain of the new world order created by 9/11, while their former allies and friends remain on the other side, wishing they could still live in the safety and collective security of the world that existed before 9/11. In that now vanished world of the 1990s, Saddam Hussein pretended to disarm, and countries such as France, Russia and China were happy to pretend to inspect.
In the world after 9/11, suddenly this pretence is no longer good enough. As long as there was as much as a 1% chance that rogue states would transfer chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to suicide bombers, Britain and the United States knew where their national interests lay, and they did not lie in deferring to the reluctance of their allies at the United Nations.
Now that combat has commenced, those, like me, who support the war need to be honest enough to address some painful questions.
Who wants to live in a world where there are no stable rules for the use of force by states? Not me. Who wants to live in a world ruled by the military power of the strong? Not me. How will we oblige American military hegemony to pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind "? I don't know. When the smoke of battle lifts, those who support the war will survey a battle zone that will include the ruins of the multilateral political order created in 1945.
To support the war entails a commitment to rebuild that order on new foundations. To support the war entails other discomforts as well. It means remaining distinct from the company you keep, supporting a swift and decisive victory, while maintaining your distance from the hawks, the triumphalists, the bellowing commentators who mistake machismo for maturity.
Back in the 60s, when I marched against the war in Vietnam, I learned that it is a mistake to judge a cause by the company it makes you keep. I slogged through the streets with Trotskyites who thought America was an evil empire, and I stood arm in arm with pacifists who made me wonder whether they would have fought Hitler. Since I was anti-communist, I actually had more in common with the liberal hawks who thought they were defending south Vietnam against advancing communist tyranny. But I believed that nothing could save the weak and corrupt south Vietnamese government.
This time over Iraq, I don't like the company I am keeping, but I think they are right on the issue. I much prefer the company on the other side, but I believe they are mistaken.
I don 't like President Bush's domestic policies. He should be helping state and local government maintain jobs and services, especially for the poor. His attack on affirmative action turns back decades of racial progress. The tax breaks for the rich are unjust. His deficits are mortgaging the future.
It is wrong to deny all rights of due process to the so-called illegal combatants on Guantanamo and the military brigs. The president's attorney-general is dangerously cavalier about the civil liberties he is supposed to protect. The bullying tone the president adopted in his diplomacy at the UN made it difficult to secure UN support. But I still think that Bush is right when he says Iraq would be better off if Saddam were disarmed and, if necessary, replaced by force.
It is worth remembering that Blair has similar difficulties with the company he is keeping. He disagrees with the president on the global environment, and his third-way politics are about as far from Texas conservatism as the distance, right now, between Washington and Paris. But he understands that the choice is not about the company you keep, but between alienating old, but essentially pacifist, friends and appeasing a tyrant.
A lot of my friends think that supporting Bush on this issue is naive. The company you keep, they argue, matters in politics. If you can't trust him on other issues, you have no reason to trust him on this one. If he is so cavalier about freedom at home, what makes you believe that he will say what he means about staying the course to create freedom in Iraq?
My friends also imply that the company I am keeping in this war is a definition of what kind of person I am. So where we all stand has become a litmus test of our moral identities. But this shouldn't be the case. Opposing the war doesn't make you an anti-globalist,an anti-semite or an anti-American, any more than supporting the war makes you an apologist for American imperialism. In fact in moral terms the war is not a clash of competing moral identities, but rather a battle within each of us to balance competing ethical claims. Sometimes it's easier to see this in the positions of the other side than in your own.
Recently, 14,000 "writers, academics and other intellectuals" - many of them friends of mine - published a petition against the war, while condemning the Iraqi regime for its human rights violations and supporting "efforts by the Iraqi opposition to create a democratic, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Iraq ". But since they say that "the decision to go to war at this time is morally unacceptable", I wonder what their support amounts to. Their balancing act amounts to a pat on the head to Kanan Makiya and all the Iraqis risking their lives to create a decent society. They don 't want a pat on the head. What they want is a rapid and decisive American victory.
The problem is not that overthrowing Saddam by force is "morally unjustified". Who seriously believes that 25 million Iraqis would not be better off if Saddam were overthrown?
The issue is whether it is prudent to do so, whether the risks are worth running.
Evaluating risks is not the same as making moral choices. It is impossible to be certain that improving the human rights of 25 million people is worth the cost, because no one knows what the cost will be. Besides, even if they could be known - what the philosophers call "consequential" justifications - that 25 million people will live better runs smack against "deontological"objections, namely that good consequences cannot justify killing people. I think the consequential justifications can override the deontological ones, but only if the gains in human freedom are large and the human costs are low. But let us admit it, the risks are large:the war may be bloody, the peace may be chaotic, and what might be good, in the long term, for Iraqis might not be so good for UK and US security. Success in Iraq might win America friends, or it might increase the anger of the Muslim world.
It would be great if moral certainty made risk assessment easier, but it doesn't actually do so. What may be desirable from a moral point of view may be so risky that we would be foolish to try. So what do we do? Isaiah Berlin used to say that we just have to "plump"for one option or the other in the absence of moral certainty or perfect knowledge of the future. I have plumped and many of my friends have plumped otherwise, but I do know this: we should also try to decide for ourselves, regardless of the company we keep.
During Vietnam, I marched with people who thought America was the incarnation of imperial wickedness, and I marched against people who thought America was the last best hope of mankind. Both positions seemed hopelessly ideological, and at the same time, narcissistic. The issue was not fundamentally about our souls; it was about what was right for the people of Vietnam. Just as in Vietnam, the debate over Iraq has become a referendum on American power, and what you think about Saddam seems to matter much less than what you think about America.
But the fact is that America is neither the redeemer nation, nor the evil empire. It isn't always right, but it isn't always wrong. Ideology cannot help us here. In the weeks and years ahead, the choices are not about who we are or what company we should keep nor even about what we think America is or should be. They are about what risks are worth running, when our safety depends on the answer, and when the freedom of 25 million people hangs in the balance.