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For what literally feels like months, if not years, I've been struggling to find the words to describe my feelings about this war in the months before it began. But every time I try to put together a post on the subject, words fail me. I remember watching everything unfold, feeling as if I was watching a movie of a train wreck playing in slow motion, knowing what was coming with no way to warn the passengers or alter the outcome. But it was real life, not a movie, and on a very fundamental level I knew the outcome was not, or at least should not have been, foreordained. And that was what made it so horrific. To know that the choices being made were literally that - choices - but that no matter what I or anyone else did, the wrong ones would continue to be made. It was our government, yet it was out of our hands. It was our country, yet it felt so foreign. 9/11 had been our tragedy - all of ours - and yet its meaning had been so thoroughly warped for political purposes it was hard for me to understand.

So why do I find this so hard to convey? Because looking back now, it is hard to put into words precisely why I knew the eventual outcome would be so disastrous, or why I knew - knew with what cannot be described as anything other than absolute certainty - that the justifications this administration had put forth for war were false, and that their planning for its aftermath so incomplete. I don't know how I knew, but I did. I take no pride in that fact, and to this day wish with all that I am that I had been proven wrong. I would gladly trade without hesitation the vindication of my intuition for the honor of my nation.

But how to explain that? How does one put into words after the fact what one was unable to explain even at the time?

Thankfully, someone else has finally written what I cannot. This afternoon Andrew Sullivan has provided the full text of a recent email from one of his readers, and in so many ways it captures what I've been unable to say for so long. No excerpts. Please go read the full text for yourself.

And then, allow me this one odd bit of speculation. When discussing Vietnam, it has often been said that when the administration lost Walter Cronkite, they lost the nation and they lost the war. In an odd way, I feel the same may be said for this war and Andrew Sullivan. Andrew was one of the president's strongest supporters post-9/11, and through his blog he worked hard, intentionally or not, to support the rationales offered up by this administration for why war was not just desirable but necessary. As so many others have documented, he worked hard to undermine the opposition, often questioning the patriotism of those of who worked equally hard to stand up for what they too believed was right.

But over time, as the evidence of the incompetence, incoherence, and duplicity of this administration has become harder to ignore, Andrew has walked a long, tortured path from support to dissent. In his writing you can see a man coming to terms with the error of his previous beliefs, struggling to understand how it is possible that he could have gotten it so wrong. His journey is not yet complete, but once again I have a certainty that I know where it will end. And when it does, when he finishes his transformation from true believer to heretic, I know he will find himself alone.

But why the analogy with Cronkite? Certainly Andrew's blog cannot compare to Cronkite's desk at CBS News, and his eventual (and I believe inevitable) rejection of all things Bush will not reverberate in the same way Cronkite's once did. (Although I suspect he wishes it would!). But as a symbol of a nationwide loss of faith Andrew is hard to beat. Like most American's today, he is not someone who easily fits into the simplistic, two-dimensional model of politics as it is widely portrayed. (Three words: gay, catholic, conservative) He supported the war, and he desperately wants it to succeed, but the reality of its conduct is challenging virtually everything he once believed about it. He, like so much of the nation, is gradually coming to terms with the truth about what was done in our name. And in that sense, he does in fact represent the "center" in American politics, someone committed to their ideals but open enough to eventually appreciate when they have been wrong. As one of the war's fiercest supporters who is not simply a blind partisan footsoldier, he has much in common with most of the nation. And so, when Bush loses Andrew for good, he will have lost someone who in so many ways represents so many who stand at the center. And when you lose the center, well...

Odd using Sullivan as a symbol for "the center," I realize, but it nevertheless rings true. Take that for whatever its worth.

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