Imagine you’re a devout Christian, born and raised in Lebanon (a country made up of several religious groups, including Christians). You are in the Lebanese Army, which turns against its Christian minority. Your army colleagues taunt you, you try unsuccessfully to promote Christianity among them. One day, they move you from a desk job to the infantry, put a rifle in your hand and tell you to raid a Christian house.
Major Mansour was in something like that situation: he was about to be shipped to Afghanistan, where fellow Muslims are being tortured and killed by U.S. soldiers. Mansour is a psychiatrist who has spent the last half dozen years trying to help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by their involvement in such activities. He has tried to resign from the army, even offering to reimburse the medical training he received, the army has refused.
As an individual, he’s apparently a bit fragile: perhaps that why he has no wife, going on forty. For a long time he has told himself that his country, the United States, is the country where he is the most free to practice his faith. But part of the faith forbids him from killing fellow Muslims.
Is he guilty? Of course? But who will throw the first stone?
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