Our hellish moral war with ourselves
Monday, Jun 4, 2007

By John Brummett

Ever since terrorists used our own planes to bomb us and kill thousands of purely innocent people, America’s most daunting challenge has been to remain better than those who did that to us.

It was to defend and counterattack with human compassion and human decency. It was to fight to save the civilized human race, not for personal revenge. It was to defeat our hate-filled enemies for the greater purposes of right and good, not for ego or territory.

Perhaps hardest of all, it was to resist the temptation to dismiss the values just articulated as the outdated rhetoric of a Pollyanna, no longer practical.

These guys were as bad as the Nazis and their sneak attack was as evil as that of the Japanese imperialists at Pearl Harbor. As then, having nothing to fear but fear itself, we had morality and humanity on our side.

They could hurt us. But we could lose only at our own hand.

So, coming up on six years later, how are we doing against ourselves morally? In a word, poorly.