Eight years ago, there was a massive debate in the British media about whether or not we should invade Iraq.

The grounds were strikingly shaky: a tenuous assertion that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama; allegations about a WMD program which seemed then and even more so now to have been drawn from empty air (and if you recall things differently, you probably weren’t reading the estimable Scott Ritter, who debunked the WMD claim page by page and was ignored); a loud cry that we could not tolerate Saddam’s behaviour against his own people and the world despite having bankrolled it, supported and facilitated it for decades: Rumsfeld and Thatcher celebrated him. Saddam was our guy until suddenly he wasn’t.

All the same, the fervour to go in there and save the shit out of Iraq was mighty. Columns were written, interviews given, reputations staked.

So where the hell is all that just fury now?

I’m not saying we should go into Libya. It is, I suspect, too late to do that, and it would be a geopolitically thankless, expensive, and brutal job if we did it. There was probably a moment about two weeks ago when we could have made a relatively painless commitment and done some good. It’s gone. We deliberated until it was past.

But where have all those pundits gone? The people who couldn’t stand to stand by while a free people blah blah blah? Silent. Fatigued. Know better, maybe.

And here am I. I hated the idea of going into Iraq. I hated it because from everything I read and had been taught and understood, it was a total walking cockup in a shiny metal hat. I still think it was the wrong choice. I accepted the necessity of going to Afghanistan, and still do, though what we’re doing there now I have no idea. Making the point that we don’t quit? Quitting while making that point?

But it makes my gut churn that we’re watching Benghazi fall. That we will once again betray our own rhetorical promises to support freedom and democracy wherever they may raise their heads and cry out for blah blah blah. That we will be shown for what we are: inconstant, bad friends to the wider democratic world.

For a wonder, I’m not having to say I’m angry with David Cameron. I’m not. He made his bid. Together with France (oh-so-pusillanimous France, nation of surrender and compromise, remember?) our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary did give it a shot. They failed, but they tried. But where, oh, where, was the loud press outrage, the thundering endorsement? Where are all the hawks? Turned to bloody ostriches, is where.

I’m a peacenik. I distrust armed action in any but the most blatant cases of self-defense. So why am I sitting here wishing we could have sent troops or guns or at least recognised the rebels as a legitimate national government, while all those loud bastards who said Iraq would be quick and clean and we’d be welcomed with open arms by virgin bellydancers and Baghdad would soon be the capital of a new secular arab renaissance… well. All those folks are quietly doing something else, and Benghazi, which may be the first legitimate moment for military humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another country since Bosnia, is about to be purged.

It just pisses me off. The more because sooner or later it had to happen. The Middle East dominos had to stop falling. I know they did. Great sweeping changes don’t end in fairytale moments when there are oil contracts and strategic imperatives. They just don’t. Will you think me cynical if I say that the fervour is missing because in the case of Iraq the oil had already stopped flowing, where here it was the change in the status quo which might mean someone missing out on their hit of petroleum products?

So now there will be a bloodbath instead. Sorry, Benghazi. You’re out of luck.

But I’m guessing you know that by now.