"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal

and so� it really comes down to a very basic choice that we have to make as a civilization: either: we will learn to bury the animosities of our ethnocentric, militant traditions and come to understand that earth�s survival depends on our collective, unified participation� or we will sustain this cycle of violence and revenge until humanity is returned to the status of primitivity and, earth reduced to the rubble of antiquity. it�s really up to us� it really is� up to us.

I remember back in Baghdad in 2003 when the 1st Armored Division had just arrived. I was in line at the PX (post exchange, it is the army's version of Walmart) and I overheard two soldiers from the 1st Armored Division talking about how they couldn't wait until they had killed someone. What kind of desire is that? I felt sick.

I had already killed and I remembered a quick rapid fire succession of feelings upon learning just how many my platoon and I had killed. First I felt glory, then sickness, and now I have only empty sorrow...

That day so long ago I didn't say anything to them, those two soldiers. I did pray that they never got their wish because they did not know what it was they were asking for.

Posted by Zach Attack at 9:34 AM, September 20, 2005.

You will find when you look back at your life that the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.
     ~ Henry Drummond