Illustration by Josh Hagler

I have always loved watching Disney movies. I loved to lay on my stomach sprawled across the carpet with my eyes glued to the screen as animated two-dimensional figures depicted the fight between good and evil with song and dance.

The charm of these simplistic movies is that good and bad is always easy to recognize.

The villain usually had dark features, was different from the rest of the characters in the movie, lived far away from the "good" guys and was shunned. Ursula from "The Little Mermaid," the evil stepmother from "Snow White" and the evil uncle Scar from "The Lion King" are great examples of the typical villain. They all had the obvious dark hair and dark eyes that accompany evilness, right? I mean, that is what we have been taught all our American lives.

And why should things be any different today? The bad guys still have dark hair and dark eyes and are different from us. They wear different clothes, have different customs and live far away from us.

However, the lines of good and bad are blurred in the real world. What we must realize is that we are not children anymore and that the rules of Disney do not apply.

The bad guys do not come in a specific color, and every culture, including ours, breeds evil.

However, the most evil and scary villains of all are the ones who pretend not to be villains. They act as if they are actually helping others, but in reality, they are the most destructive toward fellow humans.

The American government is a confusing institution. On the one hand, it supports many peacekeeping operations in the world and is an avid supporter of the United Nations' ventures to help keep developing nations out of turmoil.

However, its actions in the past and to this day scream of hypocrisy and two-facedness.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the United States trained men to fight the then-U.S.S.R. After this operation was over, the United States conveniently disappeared from the region and let the Afghan people suffer as radical soldiers trained by the U.S. government slowly took over their country.

Kabul used to be one of the most beautiful cities in the Middle East. Recently, one CNN reporter commented on the current state of Kabul and Afghanistan: "Imagine Ground Zero over an entire country." Bombing this country sets it back more than a hundred years.

Do we have no compassion?

The Afghans do not have electricity, running water or food. Thousands have died because of land mines and starvation from wars against the Soviets, and more Afghans have been displaced as refugees.

The Afghans are not terrorists. This country includes old men, abused women and children. The average life span is only 45 years. These people are broken and homeless - not terrorists.

The terrorists are well-hidden. They know where and how to hide. They have been doing this for years and years. The victims of this war are the poor Afghan people who have suffered before at the hands of American self-righteousness.

Not in any way am I supporting the terrorists. They should be burned alive for all the world to witness. The barbaric acts of Sept. 11 deserve a response - the victims of that vicious attack deserve justice. However, bombing an innocent country halfway across the world is simply the wrong way to seek that justice.

I don't agree with the actions of the U.S. government if any innocent person is killed. God gives life, and it is not fair for Americans in their jets to kill these people with hopes that maybe - just maybe - one or two terrorists will die.

The government recently admitted to accidentally killing an entire village of 95 Afghan people, including women and children. And we know that the U.S. government has a reputation to admit only a minuscule portion of the atrocities that it actually commits.

Our government, despite all its positive and just intentions, must find another way to handle this and stop pretending it is right. This is simply wrong.

Life isn't a Disney movie. Everyone - including America - is capable of evil, and everyone deserves life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This should not be thought of as an American ideal but a humanitarian ideal. America must stop pretending that it is right no matter what. It is not.