We’re like America’s little pit bull. They beat it, starve it, mistreat it, and once in a while they let it out to attack somebody.

They kill hundreds of people, those pilots. I would have loved to have flown the plane that dropped the bomb on Japan. A couple of dudes killed hundreds of thousands. That f****** rules! Yeah!

It struck me that such analyses had it backward. It’s the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game. Five years into this war, I am not...

In my civilian world at home in Los Angeles, half the people I know are on antidepressants or anti–panic attack drugs because they can’t handle the stress of a mean boss or a crowd at...