It’s not just about helicopters and the right kind of armoured car, is it? The problem is that we, as a nation, can’t really do war any more.

Our view of it has become too nuanced and complicated. The reasons for war always required a good edit to be persuasive — the dark motivations snipped out to give the public a focused image of a just and winnable conflict. A war relies on a certain naivety back home to be acceptable. I hate to say it, but nowadays we know too much. The golden wall behind which the powerful have always hidden their little secrets — their MPs’ expenses, their celebrity phone taps and their waterboarding — has been breached so often of late it’s beyond repair.

I watched this week that video of Iraqi prisoners, hooded and forced to squat in the agonising “stress position”, a British soldier screaming at them and calling them apes. I’m glad I saw it and I wished I hadn’t. It wasn’t the image of war I grew up with. It wasn’t fearless Tommy Atkins battling the evil Hun with a wink, a whistle and a self-rolled cigarette. It was more like one of those sickening slices of city centre violence when testosterone’s heavy in the air and you just look straight ahead and keep walking. It seemed like yob culture had been institutionalised and put to practical use.

But what do I know? What would I do if I was out there — that mysterious “there” that we don’t want to even think about? Maybe when you’ve been shot at a few times your opinions change. Maybe those people who spent their gap year “doing” the Middle East, soaking up its fabulous customs and culture, developed a slightly more affectionate view of the locals than someone who’s there to fight the Taleban.

Once someone becomes the enemy, plain and simple, it doesn’t really matter if they have an interesting cuisine or not. They’re just the bad guys. Or are they? Well, back home, it’s easy to enjoy the intriguing ambiguities of the good guy, bad guy conundrum. Should we be there? Who are the real villains? I suspect such intellectual teasers aren’t quite so much fun when your mate is dead in the sand.

Patriotism used to be a great antidote to doubt in these matters but it tends to get lumped with racism and insularity now. I watched a Sky Arts programme about the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square last week. Ken Livingstone dropped his avuncular manner for a moment to point out that the other plinths and, indeed, the central column, were occupied by “war criminals and people involved in the invasion of India”. If Nelson isn’t a hero any more, what hope is there for Nathan from Chelmsford?

Ken’s remarks show that war, and the idea of heroism in war, isn’t just unpopular nowadays — it’s unfashionable. Political correctness has made a soldier a naff thing to be. They’ve de-heroicised the troops and redrawn them as right-wing pawns — short-haired lads in big boots beating up people in turbans. It’s as if that “stress position” video was the whole story. Alternatively, we get the regular glowing references to “our boys” from the red tops. But even that feels like trying too hard — a conscious reaction to the PC view. It seems to be an attempt to stem the tide.

The truth is white van man, with his England flag in the back of the cab, is also unsure about this war. The Government’s arguments are often designed, with limited success, to win over the broadsheet reader but, meanwhile, they are, as a by-product, driving away the old-fashioned patriots. White van man doesn’t want our boys fighting for women’s rights and better schooling in some country that’s got, it seems, nothing to do with us.

Most of us are anti-war nowadays but we feel we can hate the sin but love the sinner — support the spotty lad with the rifle while condemning the horrors of the bigger picture. I’m not sure that we can. I watched the Conservatives questioning the Secretary of State for Defence, Bob Ainsworth, this week. Inevitably, the debate became an opportunity for an attack on the Government — it was letting the soldiers down and expecting them to fight with Dad’s Army equipment — regardless of the effect that such talk might have on the morale of both the troops and their relatives.

Perhaps equipment isn’t our biggest problem. I suspect that it’s pretty hard to fight in a war that seems to be becoming more and more unpopular — a war that’s constantly deconstructed and devalued by a million bits of comment and analysis. When I saw those coffins going through Wooton Bassett, with the townsfolk standing respectfully at the kerbside, it seemed like something from a bygone age. It was as if those mourners had decided to put their knowingness on hold for a while and simply respect the fallen — a sort of simplicity flashback. Even then, within a few moments of the cortège’s passing, we had a man from the crowd being interviewed on TV and saying of the war: “We shouldn’t be there.”

We seem to have outgrown war, to be too wise to buy into the propaganda, but war hasn’t gone away. Someone is actually out there, in a less nuanced life-or-death world, and we need to find a middle way between blind belief and undermining condemnation.

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