The answer is that it gets murkier and murkier by the day.

Only the diehard commentators are still maintaining that it was absolutely the right thing for us to go in when we did. (Remember the war has now been going on longer than the First World War did.)

I opposed it from the start, to the fury of my right-wing friends, and now I find a lot of them saying 'You told us so'. But granted we have made a huge mess, a quite new argument can be made for saying that we have to stay and see it through.

At this point it becomes a nice political judgment as to whether the region is likely to return to stability with us or without us. On that, granted the continuing horrible chaos, opinions will differ, but it is vital that our leaders get as broad and impartial wisdom as possible in assessing the possibilities.

There are still, alas, those on the one hand who insist that because we westerners know what's what we must of course stay and impose our way of life (dream on!). And there are still, alas, those on the other hand who insist that it's the Iraqis' mess and we have no business there -- though the present mess is at least as much of our making.

For the Christian the main obligation must be to pray; and then, to try to help at whatever point in the forming of that wise public opinion which will inform the decision-makers. And to help that same public opinion to learn from its mistakes.