A Prayer from the Faithless

I cannot fathom what either the Israeli, or the Lebanese civilians lives are like. The concept of war on a personal, direct level is beyond my comprehension. There has not been a war on my country's soil in my lifetime. I have never seen or heard a bomb - never experienced carnage of any sort. I, in 34 years, have never walked up on the charred bodies of innocent children who died in the midst of political and/or religious unrest. These things are not a part of my insulated American reality. God help me, I sincerely hope that it never is.

I don't care that I will be considered a coward if I claim nuetrality, I cannot blame either the Lebanese, or the Israelis. The Hezbollah are the guilty ones - they, and their supporters, are the reason babies are dying, that toddlers are being drug out of buildings that have been descimated by rockets. They are cowards playing a psychological war with no regard for the lives of the civilian innocents. They know that those children are the greatest propoganda possible, and a far more accurate weapon than the unguided rockets they lob over the border into Israel.

I am sad that hundreds and hundreds of people have and are dying. I am sick, literally, at the sight of children covered in a light film of dust caused by the disintigration of the world around them, beautiful faces so peaceful, and so very dead. Dead at the hand of the Hezbollah, dressed in civilian clothes, firing rockets from the center of towns, amid freshly washed sheets, careless of those that will die because, in their minds, they are not murderers, they are martyr makers.

And aside from the knot in my stomach, the lump of grief I am feeling for the dead, and for the families of the dead, and the families of those whose lives continue to be in danger - I am amazed that anyone can still sit, high on their righteousness, spewing hatred and anger, ranting about vengeance and the deserved death of the enemy - and not see that they only perpetuate the hatred and the killing and the death.

May cooler heads soon prevail, may peace soon dam the fountain of hatred and bloodshed, and dear god, may the children please please soon stop dying.