I love ya, Bowz, but I feel compelled to intervene. You're just wrong. And you're wrong for the same reasons you use to criticize our right wing friends here on the Zone. You are making the same mistake they are, and probably for the same reasons. And I'm going to call you on it just like I call them on it.

Just because the other side isn't all bad doesn't mean they're all good. And the same reasoning applies to our side. When you use the discovery of inconsistent or evil behavior committed by us, it doesn't automatically mean we are the villains in the piece, and our opponents must be heroes. Although you probably feel you are not guilty of this, that you treat both sides fairly, it still doesn't come across that way, and worse, it can also wind up being a justification of evil or a denigration of good.

We DO live in a black and white world, the problem is precisely that. It's not good, but its real. The world is not fair, and good is not guaranteed to triumph. And tragically, the bad guys never believe they are bad. Unfortunately, you still have to take sides because there is no golden middle path of uniform moral gray we can smugly claim, any more than there is a socialist workers' paradise, or a free market. Those are all directions on the compass, not locations on a map. "North" does not have a latitude and longitude.

People tend to believe what is good for them is best for everyone, and they go to great lengths to establish that as their moral guide, their principle. God save us all from principle. It is the ultimate cause of all misery and suffering in the world.

There is only one way to morally navigate this minefield. We must look at every case for what it is, a battlefield of often legitimate but opposing interests. There is no right or wrong way, there is only a best way, and even that is rarely clear. Simply recognizing that gives us no moral superiority, but neither does denying it. And sooner or later, we have to take sides, even if we don't like everything our side is up to.

We must feel free to criticize our own comrades when they indulge in self-righteousness or greed, nativism or racism, blind nationalism or "exceptionalism" or in any black and white thinking. You and I do it all the time on the Zone even if they accuse us in turn of treason, or stupidity, or immorality. But do we see that same behavior in ourselves as clearly as we see it in others? Or do we also find ways to rationalize it? There comes a time when we all have to pick sides, because the sum total of actions, no matter how diluted by individual acts of good or evil, is what ultimately matters.

We were right to ally ourselves with the monster Stalin to defeat the Nazis, and yes, it is hypocritical for us, the country of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching and genocide of the Indian, and invasion of Mexico and gunpoint annexation of vast stretches of its territory to accuse Germans of the Holocaust and aggression. But the point is the Nazis were worse, worse than our own racism, worse than the Western democracies' commercial imperialism, worse than the Soviets' most obscene crimes.

And yes, it was terrible to firebomb and nuke civilians, but even if it could have been avoided because of what we know now, or because we have evolved ethically since that time, it still was done. In the long run, one evil was preferable to the other. It is a terrible thing in wartime to send another young man to his grave that you have no personal quarrel with, even if he is determined to do the same thing to you. But that's the way it is. To understand that is a sign of goodness, to allow it to paralyze us into immobility only allows evil to triumph. Some wars have to be fought, even if it isn't always clear at the time which side should win.

Pick your side and fight for what's right, even our right wing friends here do that, misguided and confused as they may be. But don't be tempted into the same error they have succumbed to. Do not take the easy way out by claiming that since you have seen evil, you have truly identified the only source of evil is the other side. Them.

That is the true enemy, the ultimate evil is moral certainty. It is what makes atrocity not only possible, but inevitable.