Not just about the press. Legislators, executives, and commanders should apply the same tests to their own ideas.

The founders knew that war is the greatest nursery of despotism. Not only through direct government power enhancement, but through the way that the process of going to war and being at war dull the edge of civil citizenship. Wars- even unavoidable, essential, defensive, and victorious wars- are corrosive of liberty. To steal a line, wars are like kryptonite to freedom.

ALL citizens should ALWAYS assume governments lie. The burden of proof is, and should always be, on government in every phase of its life.

I might have phrased some of these things differently, but before ANY war I’d hope the press did all these things.

Even the “so different” things. I don’t mean it like Froomkin and Kerry do. But if we are talking war and Surinam isn’t, “why?” is a fair question. I’d want to know why the asserted casus belli affects us and not Surinam. All that is is another way of asking how this “threat” directly touches on our, as opposed to someone else’s, interests. Why do WE have to go to war over this, and Surinam doesn’t? I’d expect a reporter to ask it, and a war advocate to be able to answer it. If the answer isn’t screamingly obvious, maybe we can hold hard.

I’m sure that Mrs. Thatcher (for example) could have answered the “why are we different” question to the satisfaction of her free citizen masters. Mr. Roosevelt couldn’t on 12-6-41. Two days later, he could.

“What’s different” applies to the target, too. It’s a good question to ask about tyrants Mugabe and Hussein, theocracies Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, or “unauthorized” nuclear powers Iran and Pakistan.

I cannot imagine a Washington or Lincoln disagreeing with any of Mr. Froomkin’s points. Nor F.D. R., who was trumpeting the answers to all of them long before Pearl Harbour.

It’s unlikely but not impossible that this kind of candor augurs a change in how the media’s owners allow it to operate.