It is worth stating something plainly because people often assume political views appear fully formed. They rarely do. Mine certainly didn’t.
I voted for George W. Bush twice. At the time I believed the basic case the administration made about Iraq: that Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat, that the United States had to act before the danger grew worse, and that American leadership after 9/11 required decisive action. Like many Americans, I trusted the president and the institutions around him.
By about 2005, that trust had begun to erode.
The longer the war unfolded, the more the rationale seemed to dissolve under scrutiny. Weapons of mass destruction never appeared. The connection to terrorism that had been implied in the early rhetoric proved far weaker than advertised. The confident predictions about stability in Iraq turned into a grinding insurgency and a costly occupation.
It became difficult to escape the conclusion that the public case for the war had been constructed on exaggeration, selective intelligence, and political narrative rather than clear evidence. In retrospect many of the claims that animated the war proved specious. My own writing at the time reflects that shift: skepticism about the administration’s claims, criticism of the media’s failure to challenge them aggressively, and growing concern that fear and ideological furor were distorting public judgment.
But another realization followed close behind.
The Iraq War was not just a foreign policy failure; it revealed something deeper about the political coalition that supported it.
Militant religion and militant politics share a dangerous habit: they reward loyalty over truth. Once that switch flips, the moral test is no longer whether a war is just or honest, but whether it serves the tribe. At that point even a war criminal can be defended as a hero.
In the early 2000s the Republican coalition increasingly fused evangelical Christianity with nationalist politics. The rhetoric of the period frequently framed American power not merely as strategic necessity but as moral destiny. The president was not just a political leader but, in some narratives, an instrument of divine purpose.
When political authority becomes sacralized in this way, dissent becomes morally suspect. Criticism of policy is reinterpreted as betrayal of the nation or even of God’s plan. Under those conditions it becomes remarkably easy for a disastrous war to continue long after its original justification has collapsed.
We saw this dynamic repeatedly. Jerry Falwell suggested the Iraq War was part of God’s plan. Franklin Graham described Islam as an inherently violent religion while defending the administration’s war posture. In the years immediately after 9/11, anti-Islam rhetoric became common within segments of the religious right, where the conflict with jihadist terrorism was often portrayed as a broader civilizational struggle between Christianity and Islam. That framing blurred the line between legitimate security concerns and religious hostility. I have never shared that view. I believe the American principle of a strict wall of separation between church and state is essential precisely because the government must never be used to privilege one religion or to suppress another.
Meanwhile the political message remained constant: we had to “fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and questioning that logic was portrayed as weakness.
The same structural vulnerability (tribalism fueled intentionally by warmongering) exists in any democracy. Democratic skepticism is the bulwark that prevents political loyalty from hardening into blind obedience. Those coffins with flags should open our eyes to this cost.
When a political movement teaches its followers that loyalty is virtue and skepticism is treason, democratic institutions begin to erode from within. In such environments even mendacious claims can be repeated until they acquire the veneer of truth. This is a persistent lesson of history, aptly captured by Orwell.
The strange thing about modern politics is not that this dynamic exists. It is that it persists even in an age where information is abundant and competing viewpoints are readily available. Bootlickers who choose to silo themselves away from any skepticism or criticism of political leaders have no excuses.
Access to facts alone does not protect a society from sacralized power. Only a culture that values skepticism, evidence, and the willingness to question its own leaders can do that. Subtle at first, almost imperceptible and insidious, but the cumulative effect of courage is contagious. Lickspittles are the last to save face.
The lesson of Iraq, for me at least, was not simply that governments can make catastrophic mistakes. It was that citizens must be willing to re-examine the stories they once believed—even the ones that felt patriotic, righteous, and morally certain at the time. I did. And we all must still, as a practice and price of citizenship.
