There's got to be a better way

I don't watch that much TV. When I do, I try to watch something that's not completely vacuous (I avoid so-called "reality TV" at all costs). So I was taking a little break just now from the script I'm working on, and I flipped on the History Channel. It was a program about 9/11.

Not again, right? But somehow, I couldn't change the channel. There were all these photographs from that day, people bleeding, people crying, people jumping out of the buildings. And suddenly I just started crying and couldn't stop.

I know, I know, we've been over this tragedy a million times. In fact, George W. has made certain that we don't forget it for a minute, lest our desire to avenge ourselves against the "evildoers" lapse. But what gets me is that right now, this minute, somebody's mother in Iraq is wearing the same grotesque mask of tragedy we see on so many faces in the photgraphs of 9/11. Children are motherless, wives are losing their husbands, citizens of our planet are without food, without drugs, without schools and hospitals, churches and mosques.

I just can't wrap my mind around the idea that all this destruction is serving somehow to bring an end to the destruction.

According to CNN, there have been 2,305 coalition deaths in the war (erm, excuse me, conflict) in Iraq as of today. How many non-coalition casualties have there been, I wonder? Who's counting those? Who is photographing the despair on their faces so that those left behind will never forget? When does it end?

It just seems to me that violence will only beget violence, regardless of anyone's best intentions.