Starting Sunday night and continuing for many nights thereafter PBS is airing a series called America at a Crossroads examining where we are in the war on terror. Don’t be put off by the series host (Robert MacNeill), this is not the typical public television fare. The first program features Richard Perle jousting with anti-war demonstrators on the Mall and offering a defense of the Iraq War.

The project is the brain child of Michael Pack, formerly a voice of sanity at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who has now returned to his successful private filmmaking career. He pushed to ensure that other voices, beyond the usual slightly left of center views that dominate public TV, would get airtime. The task was Herculean. But this series is one of the successes. Tell everyone at church and synagogue or wherever you are this weekend to tune in.

There is one dark side to the story. A program that had been developed by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy on courageous Muslims who speak up in favor of freedom and democracy was axed .