There’s really only one question she should be asked. 

Where are the profits from your book going?

Are they being given to charities that make prosthetic limbs for the soldiers returning from the war?

Are they being given to an Iraqi family that is homeless? To a child that is orphaned? To a city or town bombed or burned or overrun?

Are they being used to dig wells, to buy generators, to lay sewer pipes? Are they purchasing back the cultural heritage looted in the chaos following the war about which you were “proved fucking right?”

If they are not, then get the fuck out of the green room, you goddamn ghoul. Make room on the couch for somebody, anybody, who was right about the war you were so staggeringly wrong about.

Make room for Joe Wilson, for Valerie Plame, for Cindy Sheehan, for Howard Dean, for every one of a hundred thousand people who shut down the goddamn streets back in 2002 so that we maybe might not do this. Make room for any one of the 156 members of Congress who were not chickenshit, who did not fail in their duty, who were not interested in sucking up or knuckling under.

Make room for the reporters who weren’t jerking themselves off about their access at a party. Make room for the bloggers and the writers and the artists and the singers who were told to shut up and sit down if they didn’t want to wave flags around and yell. Make room for the smelliest hippie with the rudest T-shirt you can think of, the one with the book about Che in his Army surplus backpack, because he has more to say about this than you ever should.

Make room for people, even, who admitted their mistakes and tried to fix them. Make room for people who tried, too late, to stop things from getting worse. Make room for John Kerry and John Edwards and everybody who turned around on Bush not in 2005 when it was convenient but in 2003 when nobody could be bothered.

Make room for those still fighting the war. Make room for a soldier or a sailor or a Marine. Make room for somebody who faced actual consequences, whose family might miss a meal, as a result of world events. Make room for somebody who was in danger of something more drastic than mean things being said about them on the Internet. Make room for somebody who didn’t just tour the war zone. Make room for the first guy into the war and the last guy out. Make room for somebody whose boots have dust on them, because he or she will have more to say than you.

Make room for her. And him. And him. And her. Make room for them. For these people. These. And these.

Make room for people who can talk like grown-ups. Your book should be one sentence long. It should say, “I am sorry about all the dead people.”

Have the good sense to say that and go the fuck away, and make room for somebody who matters.

A.