Citizen Khadr

Once upon a simpler time the world was divided between the Children of Light (us, of course) and the Children of Darkness (them). It was called the Cold War.

Before it was over, the Cold War did teach us a few lessons. Certainly it was important to stand up for principles of freedom and human dignity and see these through to eventual vindication. But there were more troubling lessons as well. The darkness of the deeds of the other side—mass murder, gulags, stultifying oppression—did not magically cleanse our side of moral responsibility for the means we employed to defend ourselves. That the other side was black did not automatically make us white. As human beings we were shades of grey.

Another lesson learned early in the Cold War was that confronting an antagonist abroad by hunting down an alleged fifth column of traitors within is deeply divisive and destructive of the very fabric of liberal democracy. This lesson was called McCarthyism: by the late...