I like everyone else felt my eyes well up a bit, when I read on the subway what I had only heard rumored the day before.  I deplore all needless loss of human life. The morning reminded me of the mornings after 9/11, when a somber mood on the streets was palpable.  Conspicuous by its absence on the subway platforms was the missing background chatter of people going to work, laughter with strangers about the terrible transit service, or post-mortems on a recent Red Sox game.  

Then an anger began to rise in me, at first vague and confusing, then I put my finger on it.  Thirty two people.  That many young soldiers are killed in Iraq every month, and where is the national outpouring, the media sensationalism, the somberness in the streets?  All of them as young, as innocent, as undeserving of a life cut short?

That's different, they knew what they were signing up for, a coworker maintained when the morning office banter turned to the Virginia Tech killings.  Yes, but a needless death is a needless death, I said, and the Iraq fallen were sent to deaths every bit as senseless, as needless, as the V.T. victims.  If this kind of outpouring accompanied the news of every two or three dozen names released by the Pentagon, we'd be out of Iraq right now.  Instead, we're not even allowed to see the coffins coming off the planes at Dover Air Force Base.

Of course that led us onto ground on which we know we disagree, whether or not the Iraq invasion and occupation was necessary.  We hashed out our usual positions, his that none of us were privy to the information the president had at the time he made a decision to go to war, mine that Bush's mind was made up all along that he was going to topple Hussein, because he thought Saddam tried to kill his daddy.  Everything else was a lie, and he didn't care how many brave men died setting his personal business right.  My coworker, an intelligent and thoughtful man, conceded that, wherever one stands on the war, my observation on Virginia was a good one.

Another friend accused me of being a bit hard-hearted, saying I was making an invalid comparison, and that soldiers in Iraq are armed and trained to defend themselves.  My answer was that no amount of armor stops an IED projectile with your name on it, and that the comparison was indeed invalid.  The reality of the deaths in Iraq is even worse.

It seems inevitable now in our world that every few years a psycho or psychos somewhere will pop-off and take a number of us with them.  Salvi, McDermott, Columbine, now V.T.  As Spaulding Gray said, it's as if Evil is a tornado-like weather pattern forming in the atmosphere at all times, and the only question is where it will touch down next.  

On the other hand, we as a society collectively agreed to send a number of our young people to certain death. That is the only way in war.  There was nothing inevitable about it. It was agreed upon according to the rules of our democratic system.  

I grieve for the families shattered by the killings at Virginia Tech.  And I abhor the way in which our society seems to look away every time another flag-draped coffin comes off the plane at Dover, when you never see George Bush shove his face into the picture the way he did after Virginia Tech, to be met only by families every bit as shattered, every bit as confused as to why their beautiful loved ones have been suddenly ripped from their bosoms. As to whether saying a "needless" death according to our best lights is the same as "dying in vain," that is a judgement only for God, whose ways are beyond us, to make, not for politicians.

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