I've learned from cartoons of two big lies we tell our children. (That's Yugioh, a Japanese cartoon character my kids like, from RedJupiter.com.)

We tell them that evil people know they're evil, that they stand for evil, and that they have evil intent. We give them lines like "Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"

Second, we tell them that the battle of good and evil can be solved, that the story can be ended, that we can be happy ever after. We're going to end this, the hero will say, "once and for all."

Adults know better, or we're supposed to. We learn that no leader really has evil intentions. Hitler and Stalin were nationalists. Osama Bin Laden considers himself a defender of the faith.

What makes you good or evil, in the end, isn't ends but means. Those who do evil are "evil-doers."

Now all nations have evil-doers among them. We call them our military. These people are allowed to use euphemisms for the evil they do, like "collateral damage." We let them do this for two reasons. First, if we forced them to face what they were doing squarely most couldn't do it. Second, we depend on their leaders to tell greater good from lesser evil. We call this the burden of command.

Our great commanders have always been haunted by what they forced men to do in the name of their causes. As it was for Washington so it was for Lincoln and Lee, for Wilson and Eisenhower. There is anguish and guilt. Eisenhower talked of having to act cheerful among men he was sending to death. It wears on you, he wrote.

In order to win our wars, we also use propaganda to muddy these distinctions. We pin inhuman labels on our opponents. We forgive everything our own side does. We must do this. Otherwise how could we do such evil, or allow it to be done in our name?

But in our hearts we know different. The Greatest Generation knew what evil they did in World War II. My dad never talked about it. Chances are yours didn't either. They just tried, through the rest of their lives, to do good, to leave something positive. They prayed you would never face what they did and could make a positive choice. Vietnam veterans are the same way, even though their war was lost. Many have traveled back to Vietnam. Others have plunged into public service.

But Vietnam didn't touch everyone, then or now. Millions of men and women were able to avoid service. Some did this deliberately, others did it by accident. (In my case, I was just a year too young. I filed for the draft in 1973 and no one was taken.) As a result we gained the benefits of the propaganda without having to face the contradictions that made it necessary.

This has happened before. Men too young to have fought in the Civil War created the game of football and committed genocide against America's Indians. Later they sought the glory of the Spanish-American conflict, or like Stephen Crane they re-created the conflicts in fiction.

What makes America unique among nations is that I can write this, you can read this, and if you're an American we can do something about it. We are not slaves to leaders who confuse means and ends, who believe their own propaganda, or who have no qualms about the evil done in their name.

We can end it, once and for all. Or we can endorse it. But if we endorse it, as a people, none of us - even those who opposed the war - will ever wash our hands of what was done in our name.

It's unfair that, to be good, you have to fight with one hand tied behind the back. You have to obey moral strictures your evil opponent thinks nothing of breaking. It's not a fair fight. It's asymmetrical.

For those who seek to do good the choices will inevitably be harder than for those who confuse ends and means. As the conflict grows fiercer, as it nears its climax, these decisions get harder. If you're not anguished by them you're not thinking, you're not truly an adult, and you're likely to be manipulated, as a child is, by the simplest tales of good vs. evil, able to rationalize anything done in your name to reach once and for all.

My prayer for America is adulthood.