You realize, of course, that they’re going to try to blame us for everything from now on.

It doesn’t matter whether the war has been prevented or merely delayed. It doesn’t even matter that it may take place and be an easy rout. Afterward they’ll blame our resistance to the war for anything that goes wrong in America or the world.

Another terrorist attack? More and scarier saber-rattling from North Korea, or possibly Iran? Difficulties in an Iraq war? They’ll say it’s because the administration had to deal with us, the naysayers, instead of focusing completely on terror or rogue states or war planning. (They’ll say we distracted them even though they’re saying now that Iraq isn’t distracting them from al-Qaeda.)

More trouble between Israel and the Palestinians? They’ll say we encouraged it, with our “pro-terror” demonstrations, or that we delayed the peaceful resolution of the crisis that was simply inevitable after an Iraq war.

A worsening economy? They’ll say the war cost more because we forced them to delay it. They’ll say oil prices stayed high for too long because they had to wait to fight.

This won’t just be the same old right-wing line, that everything bad is the fault of liberals. This will essentially be an accusation of treason. Our “disloyalty,” not foolhardy tax cuts, will be blamed for hard times. Our “disloyalty,” not diplomatic ineptitude and the reckless “axis of evil” insult, will be blamed for a worsening Korean crisis. Our “disloyalty” will be blamed if too many GIs die in friendly fire in an Iraq war, if there are excessive civilian casualties, if Saddam uses chemical or biological weapons (they’ll say we gave him time to perfect his nefarious schemes).

A lot of Americans really might buy this argument. And if they don’t do so spontaneously, they’ll certainly be encouraged to do so in 2004. Unless life is suddenly very, very good, the election that year will almost certainly be an “angry white male” election, and we’re going to be the targets of that anger.

Damn, I hope I’m wrong about this.