Live From New York
Iraq and the Unspeakable
The awful arithmetic of war.
It is time to speak the unspeakable. But we should get something straight right from the start. To us, there is image more searing, heart-rending an image than that of women and children who have become, in the antiseptic phraseology of war, collateral damage. But equally so, in the awful arithmetic of war, it doesn't make sense, if a trade-off there must be, to equate the lives of people close to you with the lives of those who are not. It would be patent hypocrisy for a man to say that he equates the death of his mother with the death of the fellow who drives the bus that takes him to work every day. Similarly, we cannot easily abide equating the death of a young American in the Armed Forces with the death, cruel though it may be, of an Iraqi civilian. It is true any death is a tragedy. In 1624, John Donne wrote:
p>"... any mans death diminishes me, br> because I am involved in Mankinde ; br> And therefore never send to br> know for whom the bell tolls; br> It tolls for thee ." /p>
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