Required Reading

Sebastian Mallaby:

The images from Abu Ghraib make you recoil from the Iraq mission: You want to forget this awful chapter in our history, with all its tragic errors. But the really bad news about the Iraq war is that we’re going to fight more wars rather like it. Technological, demographic and ideological trends make that just about inevitable. There can be no withdrawal from this broader struggle. The only real hope is to get better at it.

There’s the first graf for you. Now go read the rest.