This is a painful column to write. All my life, I have seen the United States as the repository of mankind’s loftiest hopes and ambitions, the nation that would place its flag on Mars as surely as it did on the moon.

Even when the U.S. clashed with my British homeland, as when American troops invaded the Caribbean country of Grenada, a commonwealth member, in 1983, I still saw the U.S. as the good guys. So, indeed, did most Grenadians: The anniversary of the removal of their Marxist dictator is marked every year as Thanksgiving Day.