In the theater of war, sometimes it's Broadway and sometimes it's that smoking little black box theater near the docks. In this article, the Joint Chiefs are recommending an immediate shift from Iraq to Afghanistan. On March 19th, 2003 we went to war with Iraq, under the false notion of WMD's. Ok, recap finished. War's one of those funny things. Not "Alway's Sunny..." funny, either. It's so big and so horrible and has so many people and facets and suits and shiny things that it begins to have the attributes of a circus. Generals with whips, giant elephants tanks, trapeze bunker busters falling gracefully in the rafters. And it's impossible to watch it all. At a certain point you begin to take it all for granted. Then you see something like this. (WARNING, this is a pretty graphic image.) Images like this are graphic enough from your desk. Imagine being there, breathing in the taste of smoke and watching people run into houses and under things for cover. It's amazing to me how we are a species endowed with the desire to be near each other, yet mostly devoid of the ability to feel empathy for those outside of our immediate sight. I've been pretty pessimistic lately, despite gains in certain aspects of government policy and attitudes which have shifted (for now). Who knows if we ever really learn lessons. We see pain, yet it's easy to be so complacent that we forget how much agony war truly brings. How much of that is happening right now? As soon as we start separating each other, we begin to lose the ability to empathize with others. I think it's just important to be reminded of the actual physical carnage of war. No one really wants to see it, but usually after the immediate shock wanes, what's left is a sense of urgency, concern, and hopefully some sense of human morality. The out of sight out of mind credo just doesn't cut it anymore.
