Germany is perhaps the only country in the world where the mere mention of its cities casts a wide and unwanted shadow of national shame. Dachau has become a symbol for death. Nuremberg is a metaphor for universal judgment. Dresden is synonymous with the victor’s vengeance.

And, of course, Berlin and Munich are remembered as much for their problematic connection to Olympic history than anything else. In 1936, the Third Reich realized that world domination was more likely on the battlefield than in track and field. And in 1972, the Germans failed to protect the Israeli Olympic team from Palestinian terrorists who massacred 11 of its athletes.

Munich was also once known as the site of an infamous appeasement, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared “peace in our time.” Steven Spielberg, who is an American ambassador for a certain conciliatory, cinematic message, also wishes for peace. With his latest film, “Munich,” he may finally have recast the city so that it will no longer be synonymous with defeat. What remains is a metaphor for moral ambivalence and ambiguity.

The film tracks a group of Israeli intelligence operatives who have been assigned a covert mission to assassinate the 11 Palestinians who masterminded the murders of Black September. Cut off from their families and, officially, operating without portfolio from the Israeli government, this nomadic tribe of hit men achieve their targets one by one. But they also find themselves increasingly troubled by the moral dimension of their mission. Each act of revenge inspires an equally gruesome reprisal. Each murdered terrorist is soon replaced by someone more skilled at the task. There is no end in sight, and the hunters are not only haunted, but similarly hunted.

The practical and symbolic value of moral retribution is undermined by the recycling of murder, the infinite escalation of violence, and the damage done to the souls of those who leave the normalcy of their domesticated lives and enter the zero-sum gray-zone of counter terrorism.

Faced with this moral dilemma, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is shown in the film struggling with the legal and moral implications of these targeted assassinations. Apparently, 30 years before September 11, 2001, she knew that the war on terror is different from other wars. Terrorists do not wear uniforms, and their targets are not soldiers, but civilians. The victory they seek is in manufacturing fear. Surely those who play by no rules other than their own assume the risk that liberties will be taken with moral imperatives and the rule of law.

Clearly the reaction of Israelis to this film is going to have special resonance. In many ways, “Munich” suggests a disturbing moral equivalence between the terrorism of the Palestinians and the retaliation of the Israelis. In the vision of this film, these global antagonists are just people with families and grievances and the capacity for both revenge and regret. But the film focuses the moral spotlight on the Israeli avengers alone; only they are shown consumed with doubt. It is the moral compass of the Israeli patriot that is being tested here. A similar moral inquiry is not demanded of the forefathers of Palestinian terrorism.

And as America continues its own war on terrorism, “Munich,” flickering on screens across this country, will clearly send a nuanced signal of distress to those who follow the war in Iraq with its almost daily carnage of car bombs, and the civil liberties implications of the Patriot Act, and the torturing of suspected terrorists and the star chamber proceedings that take place in military detention centers in Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.

Should we be humanizing these hard decisions of national security and retributive justice when we are fighting a war on terror? Might this film not weaken the resolve of those Americans who have volunteered to protect this country from enemies who undoubtedly laugh at the spectacle of our national soul-searching as we try to fit the square peg of our Constitution into the round hole of world terrorism?

Yet, in so many ways, “Munich” is an invaluable film, precisely because it exposes the severe moral contradictions and competing visions of morality that the war on terrorism presents. Terrorists arguably deserve to die, but the human cost of exacting revenge is great. And the world is a better place when we are at least mindful of that cost.

The torturer can become, and should become, tortured. Revenge is a perfectly understandable moral and human impulse, but so is restraint, conflict, and doubt. The absolutism of self-help has no greater moral currency than the rule of law. There is as much danger in humanizing evil as there is in demonizing something that has the potential for good.

Revealing the human dimension is never a bad thing. Humanity should always penetrate the conscience, even when a mission of murder is a moral one.

“Munich” reminds us of what happens when professional tasks are too easily divided from moral consequences. What results is the psychic numbing that allows the professional killer and the domesticated family man to coexist in the same person. Isn’t that, in part, why “The Sopranos” makes for such compelling television?

Given the grim realities of the world in which we live, it’s far better that hit squads and interrogators experience the loss of life in human terms, and comprehend body counts and death tolls as being something more than mere numbers. If murder is necessary, at least let it not be thoughtless, at least let it be undertaken with great internal conflict and anguish.

Mr. Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, and law professor at Fordham Law School. His most recent book is “The Myth of Moral Justice.”