It is not wrong to root for your country's defeat if your country is evil

Via the Wayback Machine, the Professor revisits some posts about how the press has been covering the war in Iraq.

Jeff Goldstein adds:

In a free society, when the press comes to be perceived as simply another organ of an identifiable political point of view, the first casualty is trust. And with no anchor to hold the public’s trust, competing and increasingly bitter partisan narratives begin to battle for the right to claim the mantle of “truth.”

Is it possible for reporters not to let their personal and political views inhabit their reporting? And if a reporter believes that our presence in Iraq is inherently wrong - if not outright "evil" - is it at all possible for that reporter to write about the events there in an open, objective manner?

For my part, the idea that the United States is "evil" is laughable. I won't argue the point that the government has done - and continues to do - things I don't agree with or approve of, but that's a far cry from saying that the country is "evil". If you truly believe the US is evil, then your concept of evil is totally alien to me and your concept of good would probably scare me to death.