Events like these produce lots if creative writing...
Something has died: a hope that the world might one day come to see Americans as they see themselves. Instead, they have had to see themselves as the world sees them.

When Americans are reduced to insisting that their depravity isn't as bad as the other guy's, they have fallen deep into a pit of moral equivalence that reveals what they have lost.
From Nancy Gibbs, in the Time magazine

And from Le Soir (newspaper from Belgium):
L'effrayante banalite du mal (Evil's frightening banality)
The human being, once he's got powers, uses them and is tempted ro abuse from them. It's generally what happens in all the armies.

Raoul