Two weeks ago, Hollywood liberal and all-around gorgeous good guy George Clooney hosted a glad-handing fundraising event that, according to the Patriot Act's broad provisions, should have landed him and fellow attendees Billy Crystal, Barbra Streisand, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey, Jr., behind bars for violating broadly designed material support for terrorism laws.

We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack U.S. forces, they are called "terrorists." That is, perhaps, the inconsistency at the core of U.S. policy, that democracy can be delivered through the barrel of a gun, that terrorism can be fought by terrorizing a nation.