If violence is barbaric, it is because the act itself is a departure from civility, not because a particular purveyor of violence is a barbarian while another is civilized. The civility of deeds are not judged separate and apart from the prior civility of the doer. Our civility, on the contrary, is judged in every present moment by our present deeds. We have no prior claim to civilization that cannot be called into question whenever we resort to a state--however temporary--in which some lives are judged worthy of being nasty, brutish, and short. No one deserves to be treated like a brute; no one deserves a life shorter than the already short lives that we are allotted; no nastiness excuses nastiness in return.

Because I feel this way (rightly or wrongly, pretentious or not), I must also be a spokesperson for the doubt that a war on terrorism is more civilized than terrorism itself. With all the feeling I can muster, I join with those who say that terrorist attacks are uncivil, destructive, evil. But I cannot join with those who go on to say that terrorists are themselves embodiments of evil, that the war on terror is a clash of civilizations instead of a mutual departure from the promise of peaceable civilization. I cannot go on to say that our "way of life" has been challenged; that "we" are not "them." What should distinguish us from them, if anything, is our rejection of a rhetoric that pits "us" against "them."

[via Mode for Caleb]