LONDON — Eighty years ago, just after the First World War and with the world rapidly sliding toward the next, the French philosopher Julien Benda wrote a book called "The Treason of the Clerks"— "clerks" in the medieval sense, educated men, intellectuals, who despite their high calling chose to serve the State rather than Truth. They were the ones who provided the justification for the wars and made them possible.
Curiously, nobody has ever written a book called "The Treason of the Lawyers." Nobody has ever accused Lord Goldsmith of being an intellectual, either. But while the Law is not exactly the same as the Truth, it is certainly possible to betray it in the service of the State. That is what Goldsmith did, and it ended in a war.
Goldsmith was the attorney general, the chief law officer of the British government, when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to join the United States in the invasion of Iraq. The particular law he betrayed was the most important law of all: the one that outlaws war. The documents that prove it came spilling out last Wednesday.