Calm down. Take a moment and think.

Now, I'm the first to say that murder is wrong. But this incident in Haditha is more complicated than that and everyone needs to just relax a little. For, if we condemn these men, we'll be on a slippery slope so severe, it'll make legalizing gay marriage look almost harmless.

Remember, this is not a normal enemy. Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, quoted from the President's official memoranda, " 'I want to recognize that...al-Qaida and Taliban are a different kind of enemy. They are not conventional warriors.'" It's not even fair--these super warriors have 72 virgins and the welcoming arms of Allah; all our guys have is "stop-loss" and slashed veteran benefits.

A new kind of enemy calls for a new kind of war. According to one White Hhouse aide, "The powers of the presidency have been eroded ... to the breaking point. We are engaged in a new kind of war that cannot be fought by old methods. It can only be directed by a strong executive. ... The public understands ... that unpleasant reality, whatever the media and intellectuals say." Those swishy, cabernet-drinking "intellectuals" know nothing about the public! This is America, birthplace of Foxy Boxing, super-sized fries, and Toby Keith. We true Americans can speak for ourselves; you can tell the "media" and the "intellectuals" to go back to their synagogue and shut up.

Thank Christian God we have a strong executive who can handle this new type of war. In 2003, President Bush declared, "We are redefining war on our terms." That's the American spirit. If we don't know a definition, we make one up. You don't think that war entails the legitimating of torture, massive civilian deaths, corporate pandering, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, the trampling of domestic civil liberties, and the complete rejection of international law? Well, read the redefinition.

But back to that slippery slope. We don't want this to turn into an analysis of why soldiers are under so much "stress." We don't want to ask why, when Rumsfeld said the invasion would be a "cakewalk," he didn't anticipate a bloody religious resistance. Or why Bush said "we found weapons of mass destruction" or "we're not going to have many casualties" or "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" after that brave aircraft carrier landing in 2003. We don't want people thinking that our soldiers are under "stress" because their presence is opposed by vast numbers of Iraqis and that "a new generation of terrorists and insurgents is being radicalized by the war..."

We don't want to look too hard at Haditha because it shoves the issues of torture and lawlessness under the spotlight. According to Wilkerson, "What was clearly implemented by the armed forces was a loosening of the guidelines that Geneva creates for them. ... And when you do that ... you open Pandora's box with regard to the armed forces." Indeed, torture is the first collision on Haditha's slippery slope.

We don't want people to know that at least 108 prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, 27 of whom the government admits may have been victims of homicide caused by "strangulation," "hypothermia," "asphyxiation," and "blunt force injuries." Or that, when convicted of these crimes, the perpetrators, like Sgt. Salcedo in Afghanistan, are punished harshly with a letter of reprimand and reduction in rank.

There is nothing we can do about the Abu Ghraib backlash, but it would be a shame if the incident in Haditha called attention to subsequent unpleasantness. It's probably better to keep quiet that "a Special Operations unit converted an Iraqi military base into a torture chamber ... using prisoners as paintball targets...." or that an Iraqi "man said he had been forced to strip, punched in the spine until he fainted ... and kicked in the stomach until he vomited" because his father supposedly worked for Saddam.

While some irresponsible folks highlight these abuses and denounce them as amoral brutality, the mainstream media has rightfully taken a more open view on the issue. We need more newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, which featured an editorial condemning critics of torture, saying those "who threw around words like 'torture'...have endangered the lives of soldiers by forcing a retreat in interrogation techniques so severe that it's hampering the US ability to fight...." EXACTLY. When these liberals complain that the war is a disaster, they don't realize that it's their fault. The real problem is that we're not torturing enough.

Delving deeper into Haditha is bad for everyone. It's bad for Marines spokesman Jeffrey Pool, who told the reporter who originally asked questions about Haditha, "I cannot believe you're buying any of this. ... This falls into the same category of any [al-Qaeda in Iraq] propaganda." It's bad for the Marines accused of offering hush money in "the shooting death of a disabled Iraqi man in the Baghdad suburb of Hamdaniyah on April 26." It's bad for the soldiers who killed 11 civilians, including up to five children, in the village of Ishaqi. The soldiers were cleared of illegal action, making the dead victims of "collateral damage," not murder, but questions linger in light of Haditha.

Here is the thing about Haditha that liberals and critics will never understand: even if the families slaughtered were not harboring the terrorists who attacked our troops, they probably would have. Our troops need to find these insurgents who hide out in the houses of those who support the cause--this includes, many, many houses. It's best to shrug this incident off as an aberration and move on, because when people realize that the "few bad apples" are really just normal apples from a diseased tree, there will be problems. Haditha is the war in Iraq. The white phosphorus used in Fallujah is the war in Iraq. Torture is the war in Iraq. And that's okay. Liberty has a price. And unless you want to see outrageous accusations against the liberators in the Bush administration, unless you want to see the term "war criminal" thrown around by dangerous radicals, and unless you want the nation to see the shameful truth that lies in shards at the bottom of that slippery slope, then it is best to just support our troops, and let this be the last time we mention Haditha. --Aaron Sussman is a student at Wesleyan University. More of his work can be found at http://www.AcrowdedFire.com and he can be contacted at AcrowdedFire@Yahoo.com. All citations for this article can be found at AcrowdedFire.com