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Apologies for the recent bout of silence, but between an especially busy week at work and recently-returned light-of-my-life, blogging got shunted down my priority list. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to write this post not in order to rave about something great or beautiful, but to lament a series of senseless acts of violence.

Regardless of one's political beliefs or tolerance for violence in the name of a cause, it's safe to say that the vast majority of people are revolted by the targeting of civilians during any conflict. It's one thing to kill a soldier: certain responsibilities are accrued upon donning a uniform. While the sacrifice may be valiant, it's hardly shocking. Civilian death is something else entirely and it disgusts us for a good reason.

Choosing to detonate explosions in a heavily-populated urban center shows the kind of desperate cowardice and predatory malice that lies behind these so-called "crusaders"(*). When the nuns at my dad's old grundschule would hammer that ruler down on his knuckles with all the cataclysmic fury they could muster, the point wasn't to hurt him--the point was to scare the hell out of the other 29 kids in the room. Likewise, when bombs go off in what used to be a relatively peaceful urban metropolis, the purpose isn't to kill: the deaths are corollary to the main goal of terrorizing the population at large.

In April 2004, when those 600 civilians died in Falluja from artillery fire and bombing runs, the coalition's goal was to blackmail the civilian population into turning against the insurgents residing there. The "collateral damage" was just a by-product of their larger goal.

Since the invasion of Iraq began, more than 20,000 civilians have been annihilated and countless more injured, maimed or deprived of a safe and healthy existence when their home, place of business, house of worship, hospital or school was razed. All the information you want may be found here.

(*) This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.
   - George W. Bush; Washington, D.C., Sept. 16, 2001.

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For the record, I was glued to the BBC all day.