I’d come to Iraq to test my beliefs. Back in New York, I’d been a firm and vocal backer of the war, though not necessarily of the Bush administration. . . .. But a question had always nagged me: How could I truly endorse the war unless I actually went to Iraq? How did I know my assumptions were correct? And so last fall I traveled to the cradle of uncivilization, staying in Baghdad from mid-September to late October, with a four-day trip to the southern city of Basra.

Despite Iraq’s former claim to be the most "modern" culture in the Middle East -- despite the presence today of high-tech gadgetry, Internet cafés, and multichannel cable TV in a Babel of languages -- the country is in many ways reminiscent of America in the 1950s. In the absence of a civil rights mentality, ethnic, racial, and religious differences are seen as legitimate and natural grounds for discrimination. . . .. Women generally live terribly restricted lives, wrapped in black head-to-foot sheets no matter the temperature, excluded from public activities, and confined mostly to the kitchen and the bedroom. (Although Iraqi women once had more extensive rights than women in many other Middle Eastern countries, they lost ground in the 1990s as Saddam increasingly adopted Islamic law to placate his restive Shi’a population. Today they are among the most oppressed women in the region, with illiteracy rates climbing above 75 percent.) Gay rights are unknown.

I don’t mean to overstate the problems facing the U.S. in Iraq. Still, it bothers me to see supporters of the war assume that events are going better than the "biased," "liberal" media depict them. That may be true sometimes, but not always. Iraq is too complicated for such simple analysis -- a fact I admit I had not sufficiently considered when I stood up to endorse the war. Now, when I’m asked if the U.S. can succeed, I can only join others in answering: "We must. The prospect of failure in Iraq is too catastrophic to conceive." It’s not a policy so much as a statement of faith: that the center will hold, that democracy and freedom will triumph, that tyrants cannot long escape accountability and justice.

If you are going to use his death for this purpose, it would be good to read his work.

"We're at war. We're facing an enemy that is ruthless. If we put out a (pullout) timetable the enemy would adjust their tactics," Mr Bush said in a speech in Texas. "They want us to retreat. They will fail. They do not understand the character and the strength of the United States of America," the president said. He added that the best way to honour the US dead was to complete the mission in Iraq.