Bloodshed

I don't know why I did this, and I surely don't know why I'm blogging it, but probably the answer to the latter is that I hope by the time I finish this post I may understand why.

I couldn't sleep last night and was reading some back emails from the online magazine Slate, and one of the international features I was reading led me to think about the case of Nick Berg, an American who was abducted and later murdered by beheading in Iraq two years ago. And somewhere in there, too, was some contemplation of the events of 9/11 as that anniversary approaches, with the sense of the great momentum of fury that is growing toward our country and the certainty that more attacks are coming.

Well, I don't recommend any of this as a cure for insomnia, but I thought quietly about these things. And then I watched the Internet videotape of Nick Berg's decapitation.

I was not compelled to do this by morbid fascination. I thought I knew what the images would portray, and I was correct. But there was in me a sense of deep gravity and responsibility, that as an inhabitant of this planet being torn apart by rage, that I needed not to turn away from the reality of the clash as it urgently and hopelessly changed the story of one human life.