When “nice” becomes dangerous…

James Carroll asks the question I can’t avoid, and I wonder how it is that so many of us ARE avoiding it: why are Americans backing this war? Indeed, now that the mess in Iraq is slipping inexorably into chaos and potential civil war, why are we going along with it? Carroll writes:

Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?

"Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?" I suspect denial plays an important role. Indeed, Carroll goes on to suggest :

Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.

I live in a state which has perfected the practice of "nice" -- we even have a code name for it, "Minnesota nice" -- but this form of "niceness" is fundamentally broken and wrong, and we must beg forgiveness for inhabiting it, and begin to work to overcome it.