5/11/4

Food for thought? Check out the cost of this war in dollars .

At least that particular tab can be  calculated.

In all the mounting devastation it is I guess only human to put individual faces on this stuff. Or at least to react to those faces when they lock eyes with yours. It is so hard to see a local family,  the Bergs of West Chester, PA, paying such a cruel price for all of this insanity.  Nick Berg is the young man in the news tonight. He was abducted and executed in Iraq, ostensibly as a down payment for the humiliation visited upon Iraqi prisoners by some of our troops. The truth is that this kind of hatred needs no excuse. The wheel of violence however is spinning faster and it will take more strength, creativity, and courage than we've shown an aptitude for recently to stop it.  Certainly it will be easier and more tempting to abet its easy faithless inertia.

Nick's dad is not calling for blood. In his grief he actually finds fault much closer to home.
I won't go into that here.

Watch in the next few days. Tune your ears to the messages. There will be those on our airways, many,  who rush to use this terrible murder to fan the flames (not hard to do) for their own purposes and to defend (retroactively) the indefensible. There will also be, if we're lucky, a few hoarse voices left to speak for something better.

Peace,

John