Aren’t we always at war in Iraq? Mightn’t the Bugle headline just as well have been “Cloudy in Seattle”?

War in Iraq is exciting the first few times but then begins to pall, the way sex, drugs, and rock and roll turn into marriage, Prilosec, and the One Direction concert I took my daughter to.

When I was a foreign correspondent, at the turn of the last century, it seemed like I was always rushing off to cover Desert Sword, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Desert Swipe, Desert Wipe-Up. Nowadays I wouldn’t even know where to rush. We seem to have “war in Iraq” automated.

Is war in Iraq one of those things that U.S. Presidents just do? Perhaps it’s among the arcane and incomprehensible routine Oval Office ceremonies such as photo ops in the Rose Garden with foreign leaders nobody’s ever heard of, or giving every member of congress a pen, all of which have been supposedly used to sign a pointless piece of legislation.