In America, all failings are moral failings. The most significant and obvious foreign policy failure in our recent history is Vietnam. For most, the war was not "lost in the whorehouses of Saigon," as Jeff Bridges' character in Masked and Anonymous says. Instead, the argument goes, the war was lost because of those Sixties lefties, with their drugs, sex, music, etc.

For our Iraq failure, those that don't toe the "fantasy" (as Bob Herbert put it) Bush Administration line are labeled as un-American, unpatriotic, even giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy. Am I right in assuming this blaming has not yet taken on an explicit cultural dimension? Annette Kolodny says the process is predictable: a jeremiad blames moral backsliding on a "scapegoat" (my term) for group failure. But which scapegoat this time around? The anti-American professoriat? Celebrity news addicts? In any case, anything but the arrogance of our leaders.