It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we

Adam Schiff, with the gravity of one who has walked the corridors of power, declares: “It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.” In these words lies both a revelation and a lament. He exposes the danger of conventional wisdom, which too often trades truth for convenience. For if a people cease to ask why they go to war, they risk surrendering judgment to the powerful, and the lessons of history are forgotten in the haze of easy justifications.

The ancients warned of this peril. Thucydides, in his chronicle of the Peloponnesian War, showed how noble reasons were cloaked over ruthless ambition. Athens proclaimed liberty while pursuing empire, and its people, comforted by fine words, ceased to ask why they fought. In the end, their city fell, undone not by lack of strength but by lack of truth. Schiff’s warning is the same: to accept a war’s outcome without questioning its cause is to place the fate of nations in the hands of unchecked power.

History offers another mirror in the Vietnam War. At first, Americans were told the fight was for freedom and to halt communism’s spread. Yet as the years dragged on and the reasons grew less clear, many ceased to ask why, believing it enough to say that enemies had been weakened. But such acceptance left wounds on the nation’s soul, scars born not only from the fighting but from the abandonment of truth.

Schiff’s words also cut to the heart of responsibility. To say it is “enough” that Saddam Hussein is gone may comfort the present, but it evades the deeper reckoning: Was the cost just? Were the reasons true? For without this reckoning, the cycle repeats, and future wars may be waged on the same shifting sands. Wisdom is not in silence but in the courage to ask the questions others dismiss.

Let the generations remember: the measure of a just war lies not only in its outcome but in its origins. Conventional wisdom is a poor guardian of liberty, for it seeks to pacify rather than to enlighten. A people who cease to question are a people easily led astray. But a people who demand truth—who care for both the why and the what—will keep their leaders accountable and their nation’s soul intact. For only in truth does real security dwell.