No soldier was. They all returned physically or mentally scarred, some more than others.

Despite the losses, the battles he’d fought back then had at least ended decisively. When going head-to-head with the enemy, superior training, technology, and numbers always won out. His company would march their prisoners down the road, the prisoner’s hands clasped on top of their heads as ordered, bowed in defeat, slogging onward.

Our former enemies knew when they were beat, but these jihad types keep coming back for more punishment.

They don’t fight head-to-head.

They don’t give up.

When we kill them they just send in more to the slaughter, like ants.

We don’t understand how they think.

We don’t know what they want.

They have no rules.

Quick and strong, Benson had excelled in hand-to-hand combat, even entering competitions. Years later, he still trained in the martial arts. He had acquired a fondness for the ideas of balance between opposing forces, of action and reaction, of the continual quest to harmonize mind and body through mental and physical discipline, but his taste for actual combat had evaporated. He moved into the officer ranks and went into software engineering, rising to lead some of the most advanced COMSEC research, publishing classified papers on cryptosecurity, transmission, emission, and traffic-flow network security. He discharged a full colonel — a rare feat for an enlisted man — earned an MBA, and tackled the corporate world. He had wanted to give something back to his country for molding him into the man he became — disciplined, skilled, and focused — but had never found quite the right outlet.

Growing up, he was taught that the world is gray, that everything depends on circumstances and feelings, that there are no absolutes. Yet, he often found the world to be more black and white. There is good and evil; there is right and wrong. There are universal truths. There had to be, or the world would make no sense. There would be nothing to believe in.

Demonstrators marched around in a circle, carrying signs and chanting. “Make Love, Not War,” read their signs in professional lettering, and “Give Peace a Chance.” They were protesting in support of a domestic terrorist, a “suspected associate of a presumed sleeper cell,” as the media had put it, arriving for arraignment at the courthouse. Watching it all on the news, Benson was incensed at their flagrant idiocy, their self-hating death wish.

There are people out there who sympathize with these rats — the enemy within. If we’re going to survive as a country, these collaborators must be destroyed.

Surrounded by a hostile crowd, the bearded prisoner struggled furiously to escape the police holding him down, restraining him only by piling on top. He screamed in exasperation, looking around, wild-eyed.

“I — I am — innocent!”

He could hardly breathe from the weight of all the cops crushing him.

“I am please — to have—”

He struggled to fight his way out from under the pile of cops.

“United State U.S. right!”

“Shut up, you freakin’ terrorist!” shouted someone in the crowd. “You’ll get what’s comin’ to you!”

Benson couldn’t believe the audacity.

These murderers are sure quick to scream about their rights. Terrorists have no rights.

The prisoner managed to wrestle his way upright. Someone hurled a rock at him. It found its mark; blood streamed from the nasty gash that opened up his cheek. The police hustled him inside the courthouse to avoid a wild mob scene.

“What do they think this is, some lawyer show?” someone shouted.

“This is no TV show — we’re at war!”

It had the spirit of a revival-tent meeting. Everyone believing, everyone excited to be a part of something uplifting, almost magical; a feeling that they, the loyal supporters, were making a real difference, that they would change the course of history. Benson cheered at the big rally, applauding right along with everyone else. Feeling just a bit foolish, he nevertheless went along for the ride with the exuberant throng. It’s like a sporting event, he told himself; you cheer on your team. It was intoxicating to let loose and absorb the crowd’s energy, and harmless, besides.

The sound system reverberated through the stadium, making it difficult to hear what the candidate was saying, though it hardly mattered. Being here was the important thing.

“Hey, it’s great to be in, um, New Hampshire,” Joseph King opened.