Last year US marines in Haditha, Iraq, killed innocent civilians.  The numbers are still in dispute but an official investigation is due to come out soon, and one military official has stated: "This one is ugly."   And so it is:

Military officials say Marine Corp photos
taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot
at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows
a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot
dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of
anonymity because the investigation hasn’t been completed.

One
military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately
killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow
Marine.

     I raise this here as a reminder: this is what war does; it invariably demands horribly immoral actions.  That is something that the purveyors of war, and especially the US war in Iraq, may want to ignore.  There is no "clean war."  There might be just wars but that ultimate justice is always weighed against countless injustices and evils that war creates. 

    And I would push this a step further.  Bush’s rhetoric of "good" v. "evil" might too easily encourage the idea that the US is existentially good; that is, bad acts taken in the name of the US might be acceptable given the inherent goodness of the US.  I suspect this sort of reasoning is behind the American tolerance for so much bad that has happened as a result of US actions in Iraq.  Americans want to believe their country is naturally and inevitably good. 

     But there is no such thing as existential goodness.  There is a human potential for good but that goodness must be realized in practice.  A person or a country is not always innately good.  Goodness, as Confucius would tell us, is a performance.  It is something we have to thoughtfully execute every day in each of our social interactions.  Only when we act good can we be considered good. 

     When our soldiers kill innocent civilians, they are deeply immoral and so too, to the extent to which our soldiers are symbols of the nation, are we.