Becoming the enemy.

The trailer for Quentin Tarantino's new World War II movie, Inglourious Basterds, features Brad Pitt instructing his men about their mission: to go into occupied Europe and terrorize the Nazis. Now, I am not going to say that I don't enjoy war movies. I love the way that some of them can show you the best of humanity that the worst sometimes brings out.

However, the ideas Tarantino seems to be espousing in this movie are exactly what people grab on to in the real world. Pitt's character summarizes it perfectly when he says, "Nazi ain't got no humanity, they need to be destroyed."

As easy as it is to buy into that - and you can insert any enemy you want in place of "nazi" - it is simply not true. Even our enemies are people with inherent dignity. Even people who do horrible things like committing acts of genocide or terrorism and children of God, whether they know it or not.

Nothing gives us the license to abandon morality in the name of war. Nothing. And something like this movie, which only serves to glorify this kind of "no-holds-barred" violence, only helps fix in the viewer's mind that sometimes it is ok to forget our conscience.

There is a difference between war, fought to defend the innocent, and revenge and terror which only serve to strengthen our hate and make us into the very thing we are fighting against.