Let the Little Children Come

As I was reading the chapter "The Same Cross in Peace" from Faith in the Fight, one question kept nagging at me. Do Americans or does American Civil Religion always require a foil, an enemy on whom we can pin immorality? Many would argue justification in vilifying British monarchs, pro-slavery advocates, and Hitler's Germany, but to read of the continued fight back home after armistice startles me. I understand that these fighting men and women wanted to keep their identity, find their worth, and defend their ideologies, but many of the idea and the actions of the American Legion seem overkill (note the creation of the Dies Committee/ House Un-American Activities Committee, 181).
I was dumbfounded to read that the American Legion would encourage the support of French orphans, but was actively against the adoption of Jewish orphans. Ebel said it best, "that they looked upon suffering children and saw not suffering children but a looming enemy to be defeated" (190). Can America only view its own morality based on the immorality of another? Is this need for a foil so extreme that America would evade acting out the very beliefs that it advocates in order to maintain that division? Must America always identify an enemy to be fought or converted?