They are all-American boys

Those Marines in Iraq seem like "all-American boys", people keep saying.

They are. That's the problem.

And you'd think that all these right-wing Protestants who seemingly knee-jerk "support the troops" and the war and the president would understand the problem. I always thought it was doctrine that all men are fallen, sinners and damned without the intervention of Jesus.

That's why we have rules in war - to make sure that our boys in uniform don't act like people do, without those rules.

That's why we need to live up to the rules - because we say our country is better than all the others. Not just like them.

Even though we are, underneath.

What makes us different is, we don't want to be.

Or at least, we didn't use to want to be...

And it's that willfull abandoning of the moral high ground that I find hardest to forgive W and his cronies for. When it comes right down to it, he asserts we have a right to be as twisted as our enemies, instead of an obligation to hold ourselves to a higher standard.