Two weeks on, and this war is not going as planned. The plan was for a combination of heavy but precise bombing, to "shock and awe" the Iraqi people into quiescence, combined with a rapid march on Baghdad. Saddam Hussein would fall, and the Allies be welcomed into Baghdad as liberators. This has not happened. Instead, the Iraqis are fighting back, and the conquest has slowed while vast reinforcements can be brought out from America. According to Lieutenant General William Wallace, the most senior American ground commander in Iraq, "the enemy we're fighting is not the enemy we war-gamed against" So far as the capture of Baghdad is concerned, the choice may be now between various kinds of long and bloody siege. I hope the newspaper reports are wrong, and that the main fighting will soon be over. But if not, we appear to be committed to a bigger war than was promised.

Together with many other patriots, I was against going to war. We could see no evidence of an Iraqi threat to this country. No weapons of mass destruction had been found. More importantly, no means of delivery against the United Kingdom had been explained. Though repeatedly made, the claims of a link with Islamic terrorism did not stand up to scrutiny. Nor did the misgovernment of Iraq by Saddam Hussein give any reason for us to interfere. Bearing in mind the proceedings—or their lack—in the United Nations, there was not even the usual excuse of upholding "international law". It was plain to anyone not drunk on the advertising claims of the armaments industry that the war would be longer than expected; and it was plain that any eventual victory would be attended by a legacy of hatred nearly as disastrous as actual defeat. There was talk of incidental benefits for us from going to war beside the Americans - but these were not shown to be otherwise unachievable, or worth the probable costs.

But while it was wrong to go to war, we are now at war; and the question to be asked is what we ought to do next. If we cannot call back and cancel what has been done this past fortnight, we can ask how to minimise its costs It is necessary to keep ridiculing the cases for war given to us, and to keep tally of the lies and atrocities that have attended the Allied war effort. But it is also necessary to ask how we can most effectively—or least damagingly - get our country out of this American crusade.

My own view is that, now we are in it, we have no choice but to go through with this present stage of the war. It may now cost hundreds of British lives and thousands more of Iraqi lives. But I can see no reasonable alternative.

Let me explain this with another of my analogies. Imagine, my dear readers, that you are in a taxi. The driver charmed you into the back of it with his smile and unbounded promises of comfort. Sadly, he has not kept his promises. Soon into the journey began, he stopped the car and covered its scratched but still elegant paintwork with turquoise emulsion, which seems to have stopped the windscreen wipers from working. He then nearly crashed the car while moving, apparently at random, from lane to lane. He then ran over a couple of dogs and cats. At first, he denied hitting any animals at all, before conceding that he might accidentally have nearly hit some. His last word on the subject was that cats were disgusting creatures, and no one should feel sorry to have fewer of them in the world. He has not taken you where you asked him, and seems unable to understand your repeated insistence to be taken there or let out of the car.

Now he is on a dual carriageway with you, and has said he will take a sharp bend at speed. You think he is joking, but he begins to accelerate. At 80mph, you tell him to slow down. At 100mph, you threaten him. But he ignores you. He is driving at 150mph, and the bend is not more than three furlongs away. There is no time to brake. In under 20 seconds, you will be on the bend. There are three police cars following behind, and a helicopter overhead, but they can do nothing. Worse, the driver appears to have lost what little grasp he ever had on reality, and is chattering continually about how he is doing the right thing. It is not so much what he is saying that alarms, frightening though it is, as the tone in which he says it. You wonder if he has gone mad, or if some doctor has prescribed him an unhappy cocktail of medications.

All this being so, do you lean forward and try to wrestle control of the car? Or do you sit back and give the driver calming words of advice, while hoping that his driving skills in this supreme emergency may be better than he has so far revealed them to be, and that the car, despite its probable lack of maintenance, is up to taking the bend?

That, I suspect, is our current position. Though it was mad to get into it, we are now stuck in this war; and I cannot think what else to do but go through with it. If the accounts I have read are true, George Galloway, a Labour Member of Parliament, has called for a military defeat of the Allies. I do not want this. It would not bother me if the Americans alone were to be defeated. This is a war of unprovoked aggression against Iraq, and I respect the patriotic resistance of the Iraqi people—even in support of a vile régime. But I do not want them to win. There are also British forces involved. My country is in the wrong, but it is my country. National loyalty is not unconditional, and one can always think of circumstances to justify even active disloyalty. But invading Iraq, though wrong, is not one of those circumstances.

Or there is the call, made by the Duke of Devonshire in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, for an immediate Allied withdrawal. I do not think this would be advisable, even assuming the Americans could be persuaded to withdraw. The war is nowhere close to disastrous enough to justify the loss of face involved. Besides, if the enemies we have acquired hate us for the abuse of our strength, they will despise us no less for our perceived weakness should we now withdraw. Any end of the war that left any semblance of the present Iraqi Government in power would be seen as a defeat—a defeat not just for the United States, but also for this country. We should not be invading Iraq, but that does not necessarily mean we should run away leaving the job half done.

Or there is the suggestion, just made by my oldest friend, that we should withdraw British forces from the Persian Gulf, and leave the Americans to fight this war by themselves. Looking at our casualties, he says, one might think we were at war with the Americans; and, bearing in mind their present diplomatic skills, it should not be difficult to push them into the sort of argument that could justify breaking with them. They might even be secretly relieved to be without a partner that, while useful in the fighting and useful to support claims that this is not unilateral action, seems rather more squeamish than they are about putting on face masks and killing women and children.

Though attractive, however, I do not yet think this is a wise suggestion. The Americans probably do need us; and while it is one matter to back out of an alliance before the fighting starts, it is another to abandon allies on the field of battle. It would compromise our ability to make other alliances in the future. It would bring us into dangerous contempt throughout the Islamic world. And, while I despise the strategic thinking of the American Government, I have much respect for its power to seek revenge for such a betrayal.

And so we are left with continuing the war. I fear that all we can do is to urge it on to its fastest and most successful conclusion. That means tolerating the chance of high losses on all sides. It means people blown apart, dying with their insides ripped out, horribly maimed survivors, widows, orphans, and the silent, everlasting sadness thereafter. It also means the risk that success in this venture will encourage Messrs Bush and Blair into some other act of aggression.

Though I suppose I have joined their side, I remain endlessly sickened by the chorus of praise struck up over the past few months by the Conservative Party and the Telegraph set. This war, if for the moment unavoidable, is neither just nor wise. It is a wretched thing, and no good will ultimately come of it. And Tony Blair is not a great Prime Minister. Every British serviceman who dies in this war, every Iraqi serviceman and civilian whom we kill, every terrorist outrage at home this may provoke—these are his responsibility. We did not need to go to war with Iraq. It is thanks to him and his vanity or woeful misjudgement that we are at war. To return to the analogy, there may be no choice beforehand but to sit back and hope that the bend can be negotiated. But once the bend is negotiated and the car stopped, the choice is then between leaving the driver to the authorities and knocking his teeth out on the nearest kerb stone.

We must now hope that the rest of the Cabinet will work to contain our further involvement. We cannot get out of the fighting in which we are now involved. But we can limit our further liability. I look particularly to Gordon Brown to limit this through his budgets, just as Lord Kitchener starved the army of shells in the first years of the Great War. Once it is over, we must get our men out of the Persian Gulf as quickly as possible. If the Americans want to stay and take the blessings of democracy to wither in Iraq, or if they want to march on to Damascus or Teheran, they must be left to do so alone. Their coalition of the conscripted must be for one campaign only.

Above all, we must destroy Tony Blair. He has done this to us. He has forced us into a position where we can only choose between great evils. Speaking for myself, I have never in my life felt such impassioned loathing for a mere politician. He must be removed from any position of power or influence, and never again be able to send people to kill or be killed for such obscure reasons. His name must become a term of bitter abuse. If he is still Prime Minister six months after the fighting has ended, if he can dare show his face in public a day after leaving office, if his children have not within the next few years taken their mother's surname, his punishment will not have been just.