There may be an element of rewarding Tony Blair for his support over Iraq by delivering on some of his priorities. Similarly, many Arab and European countries offended by the assertion of US power in Iraq may be mollified by US engagement with another part of the Middle East.It is also worth recognising that the US does not want to act on its own in foreign policy, although it is powerful enough to do so when it feels threatened. During his election campaign, George Bush often repeated his desire to “keep the peace” in the world by “strengthening alliances”, and said that “America cannot go alone”. Hence his eagerness to insist to journalists that, in Iraq, “we have plenty of western allies; we can give you a list.”What is important is that the US seems actively engaged in a number of the world’s conflict zones in a manner for which Mr Bush’s instincts and interests might not have prepared him.The visit to Pakistan and India by Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State, is certainly a hopeful sign.

It comes a week after Mr Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, made an unexpected offer to renew talks with Pakistan over Kashmir. The US has no special interest in Kashmir, but its economic power can be used to put pressure on these nuclear-armed states to make the world a safer place.However much we might have objected to the abuse of American power in Iraq, we should applaud its deployment in situations such as this – when the United Nations simply does not have the muscle to bring the parties to the negotiating table.However uncomfortable we may feel about some of the ways in which the US has engaged with the rest of the world after 11 September, we should recognise that engagement is generally better than isolationism. Before 11 September, there was a real danger that America under Mr Bush would turn in on itself. The right wing of the Republican party is often accused of advocating a simplistic, aggressive interventionism; yet the instinct of isolationism among mainstream Republicans is just as strong.It may be optimistic to suppose that the US, having expunged the long-term irritant of Saddam, might turn its power in a sustained way to resolving regional conflicts around the world. But, given that the alternative is a corrosive and self-fulfilling cynicism, let us try to be optimistic.. The war in Iraq has changed the way we do our jobs for ever.

Audiences have been given a new and dreadful sense of what war looks like at the front line The dangers, the trauma and sometimes the tedium. Now that we have brought them that experience, it’s inevitable we will be called upon to do it again In the next conflict, wherever it may occur. And that means added pressure on us, our staff and the added dangers that come with it. And the fact that their armed escort, in order to save their lives, decided to fire on the car that was pursuing them. Whatever your views about that, we now have to discuss the reality – in fact a reality dating back to Somalia, Chechyna and Afghanistan – that on occasions some of us may need to provide armed security for our staff in hostile areas.We can all join in a collective tut-tutting and tell ourselves that somehow this is to be condemned That journalists should never be protected Should never put themselves in this position.

I think it would be altogether more useful if we asked ourselves why we have come to this – why some factions around the world hate us so much that they would like us dead.Is it just the big media organisations that are seen by some to represent the unpopular governments in the countries in which they are based? Is it just the CNNs, the BBCs or the al-Jazeeras of this world? Or is it because, somewhere along the line, some journalists have surrendered their impartiality? Is it now fashionable to be jingoistic, even xenophobic, in our reporting? Have some parts of the media abandoned the notion that ours is a precious craft, a public and civic duty?. The toffs are back this week. Ten years after John Major announced, in those appropriately flattened vowels of his, that Britain would soon become a classless society, the national obsession with public schools, gentlemen’s clubs and the eccentric, occasionally pervy behaviour which has become accepted as a class indicator, lives on. Members of the upper class may no longer hold political or economic sway over the country but, as the TV series Cambridge Spies, launched tonight on the BBC, reminds us, they play a significant part in the national imagination

The toffs are back this week.