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How Do We Confront America’s Attachment to Violence?

Its toxicity has penetrated all too deeply into the soul of the nation.

By 

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

As a religious studies professor, I know a parable when I see one. Consider the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the final events in this country’s war in Afghanistan as just such a parable taken directly from the history of our moment.

The heart-wrenching last days of that war amounted to a cautionary tale about the nature of violence and the difficulty Americans have honestly facing their own version of it. As chaos descended on Kabul, and as the Biden administration’s efforts to evacuate as many Afghans and Americans as possible were stretched to the limit, one more paroxysm of senseless violence took center stage.

A suicide bomber sent by the Islamic State group ISIS-K struck Kabul’s airport, killing and maiming Afghans as well as American troops. The response? More violence as a Hellfire missile from an American drone supposedly took aim at a member of the terror group responsible. The US military announced that its drone assassination had “,” but the missile actually  10 members of one family, seven of them children, and no terrorists at all. Later, the Pentagon admitted its “” and called the killings “a horrible tragedy of war.”

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