DtG, the politicians and the press *always* peddle the current war as The Great Cause Of Our Time -- that's obvious from most cursory review of editorial cartoons, fund-raising posters, or any other type of ephemera you would care to mention going all the way back to the Napoleonic Wars.

Yes, it's morally dubious. In 1939, the enemy was Hitler and the confluct in view was indeed the Great Cause Of Its Time, and ever since, every Western government preparing to send its armed forces into harm's way has called up that spectre to justify its intentions. "In 1939, should we have stood idly by and let Hitler get away with it? Saddam has weapons of mass destruction! He gassed the Kurds!" And away we go ... or not; Canada sat that one out.

If the government could not paint the conflict in the colours of nobility and right, nobody would sign up to go, and we couldn't have that.