July 4, 2004 "Los Angeles Times" -- Referring to the beheading of Nicholas Berg, one U.S. senator said, "I think it highlights the differences between the way we do business and, so frequently, our adversaries do business." Islamic terrorists have since beheaded another American and a South Korean.

Moral self-congratulation is an addiction in our nation. That we believe in "the American way," whatever that phrase may mean at any given time, signals our narcissistic satisfaction over the way we "do business." These depraved murders offer another occasion to pat ourselves on the back, another distraction from the true business of the Iraq war and all war: killing.

But then, it's an article of faith in our public discourse that we wage war differently from our enemies. At present, we luxuriate in our moral superiority over thugs who behead the innocent, but all along we have deemed ourselves civilized warriors in Iraq. We have based that opinion on our methods, which permit us to deny the death we have wrought, and our motives, which let us justify it.

Our government doesn't track civilian deaths, but according to the independent organization Iraq Body Count, as many as 11,000 Iraqi civilians have died since we first struck Baghdad in March 2003. When we mourn the 3,000 innocent Americans murdered on 9/11, do any of us also recognize that over three times that number of innocent Iraqis have died because we have made war on their country?

We want to believe that it is the American way never to make war except on the side of the angels. But we trouble the angels with the killing and dying we have practiced in Iraq. Righteous intentions do not guarantee righteousness; justifications for war based in deceit and delusion are no justification at all.

And so, if we are people of conscience, we must admit that the killing of an unknown Iraqi child by the push of a button miles away is no less immoral than the televised slaughter of an American adult by a butcher's knife.

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