Writing a column is like sitting atop a large hill, looking down lovingly—and angrily—at the surrounding world, embracing it in a moral perspective and sharing your analysis of what you see. Primarily, this means telling people what’s wrong.

Today, as I climbed up the hill—this is called research—something felt different, troubling. Where I used to feel enthusiasm, I felt hollow: bereft of self-confidence and certainty. I’ve been writing a weekly column for nearly half of my life, first at a local paper in Chicago for 10 years, then the current column, syndicated until recently by the Chicago Tribune, for the last 27 years. What’s going on here?

I was no longer atop that hill. Suddenly I had nothing to say. The doubt I was feeling—that I had anything relevant and valuable to add to our collective grasp of the world—overwhelmed me.

I had decided to write about what I almost always write about... war. Both current and eternal. Indeed, I had begun scrolling the internet, looking for provocative points of view. I googled the words “terrorism vs. waging war,” seeking to learn what I already knew: that the “official” world has declared a distinction between the two terms as definite as the distinction between “evil” and “good.”

Perhaps the flow of pain I felt was the realization that opposing war in relative safety is too easy. It’s not enough.

My first pop-up response was an AI Overview: “Terrorism and waging war differ fundamentally in their targets, legal frameworks, and combatants. Terrorism targets civilians to induce fear for political or ideological goals. Waging war is typically an armed conflict between states or organized groups, where lawful combatants target military objectives.”

Of course, of course. Terrorists represent evil, plain and simple. They kill real people, always for selfish reasons. But war is official. It’s state-sponsored and legal. It’s registered with God, for God’s sake. And while there’s always an evil side—the enemy—the winners, the good guys, are simply doing what they must. Civilization couldn’t have evolved without it. And that’s how we organize history: from one war to the next. This is the official understanding, which we’re spoon-fed as we grow........

© Common Dreams