"The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy," Corporal Ryan Dupre of the US Marines is reported as saying last week in the Sunday Times, writes Kevin Myers
"I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him." The Marine wasn't talking in some abstract: not far away - according to the report by Mark Franchetti, a journalist of some remarkable courage, both physical and moral - lay an entire family of Iraqis who had been killed by US Marines.
The soldiers had been ordered to prevent Iraqis from seizing a vital bridge over the Euphrates: in the stress of battle, the term "Iraqis" included this nameless band of butchered innocents fleeing Basra.
This is the sort of atrocity, atypical and unrepresentative, which the anti-American peace-campaigners will no doubt leap on with all the simplistic enthusiasm of peace-lovers everywhere.
But of course, the morality of a war is not to be judged by the delinquencies of a few front line soldiers, who, in all wars, will commit atrocities.
For "peace" is not an available option in Iraq. It has been a land without peace for a quarter of a century: and it will remain a land without peace for as much time again - and more - if Saddam Hussein is able to pass his regime over to his brace of diabolical sons.
So, the war has begun, and John Hume was absolutely right when he said: "Who among the statesmen of 1914 would have foreseen the rise of communism and fascism that the slaughter of the first World War brought about. Can anyone today be sure what will happen in the Middle East?" But as good a question as that is this: how the bloody hell are we to get out of the appalling mess we're in? Any unconditional ceasefire by the Americans and the British with Saddam still in power will be hailed as victory for him a cause of joy to Al Qaeda.
No doubt many people in Ireland will be content to see the US humiliated. These are the blithering idiots who think that this war is about "oil", though it is costing the British and the Americans far more than any profits which might accrue from the seizure of the oil wells, and will probably bring Tony Blair's political career to an end. But this is the real world, not the nursery, and even these cretins must realise that there are consequences to an Americo-British declaration of a ceasefire without any war-aims being met.
One of the central problems about this war is that people have been fed a great mythic lie about wars in the past.
The liberation of France in 1944, for example, is perceived as having been a clear and clinical affair, soldier on soldier. This is simply untrue.At least 20,000 civilians were killed in Normandy during the summer of 1944, overwhelmingly by allied action. Two events stand out: the bombing of St Lo by the USAAF on market day, and the destruction of Le Havre by the RAF, in which thousands of Normans died.
There has been no such massacre in this war; indeed, there has been every attempt to avoid one. There have, of course, been some catastrophic accidents, which allowed some journalists to indulge their taste for the luridly pornographic - "the brains of the innocent lay splattered on the street: a severed hand twitched in the dust" - which curiously enough is never in evidence whenever the dead are victims of terrorism, or even of car crashes.
It also prompted Mary Coughlan, with epic stupidity, to declare: ..."and when I saw those pictures, God forgive me, I wanted the Americans to be beaten." And that is what popular culture has done to popular perception of world events. They have been turned into a film, which has an ending, and then we all leave the cinema, with the Americans having been licked.
But in this real world, we don't leave the cinema. We're trapped in it for the rest of our lives, as are our children, and our children's children also. And the film has started, and sometimes, the characters on the screen turn and shoot the audience: and sometimes, members of the audience find themselves whisked out of the seats and placed in the centre of the action.
This great blockbuster, full of tragedy and pain and suffering, will not end merely because the Americans and the British decide they're tired of screen-life.
Even if they were to lay down their guns, the film doesn't stop. Nor can we get out of the cinema. We are stuck here, all of us, even as the nice girls selling ice-cream slumps down dead, while on screen children burn.
What people have always known, until, that is, this present age of plenty, is that we live in a world of consequence.
All deeds, be they active or inactive, will cause results. This is an iron law which has been forgotten, and been replaced by the simpering kindergarten refrain: "there must be a better way".
That is the great anthem of those who live in the gravity-free world of no consequence, as they chew their popcorn and moralise about what is occurring on screen. Murmuring in agreement, three rows back, are various terrorists.
And if the plot takes a turn they think appropriate, they'll leave their seats and join the action.
This is the film we've got. We've all got bit parts in it, and the only escape is the grave.