Simon Schama has argued that there is a suffocating "reverend togetherness" about the U.S. reaction to 9/11 that blocks out the important but awkward questions. This is true, though it suppresses far more than the "secular debate about liberty". Theological debate is also stifled. Even in this context of apparent piety would it be possible to imagine a public discussion of how Jesus' instruction to love one's enemies might have political application? Of course not. What is suffocating is the religion of the flag - not the religion of the cross or the crescent. Ironically, it is precisely the desire to be ecumenical and sensitive to all faiths that makes religion easier to conscript as a support for war. For in abstracting out the particular message of each faith tradition in the name of a blanket religiousness, the resistance to war that is differently coded within each faith tradition is effectively neutralized. Once this has been established, religious language and imagery can be applied in support of all sorts of dubious moral purposes.

And that is exactly what is happening at the moment. It is simply that "reverend togetherness" and the language of "evil", like the invocation of the western movie script, is employed to solicit maximum justification for the cowboy's course of action.