Early the next morning he presses a button and a family’s home, with them inside, is destroyed. He thinks nothing of it but duty, completing his assigned task. He could have sat in front of me in physics class, struggling with Newton’s laws just like me. And now Newton’s laws have been harnessed to kill.

The night before he laughed. He exchanged high-fives with his buddies and cracked jokes and passed the time to chase away the uneasiness all of them felt. On the brink of battle any soldier knows he is about to break one of the ten commandments and must prepare himself. Some atone in advance, some choose cowardice, and some hide behind a shield of humor and masculinity. It’s something they’ll shed tears over when their grandchildren aren’t looking, if they make it that long.

The jokes and insults and lies continue in a flurry, the young pilots trying to psyche themselves up for the task at hand. Markers are passed around and they gather around the instrument of death. Everyone is given a turn. Even the deck hands, the welders, the cook. They all want to share in the glory of battle, even if they won’t be pushing the button. But they can proudly tell their grandchildren they cooked the meal for the pilot who killed that family, if they make it that long.

Insults and provocations are written across the bombs, the missiles. “Die Saddam,” and “Suck This,” grace one of the few imports to Iraq that isn’t screened by a special U.N. committee in New York. Early the next morning it will be dropped from on high, like a child dropping rocks on the scattering ants, and then continuing to poke the crushed carcass for spite.

The bombs and missiles will fall on the few shreds of decency left in Iraq. The few remaining sources of water or power, whatever infrastructure is left to bomb. Most of it was destroyed long ago, and what’s left has been in a state of disrepair–spare parts being blocked by a special U.N. committee in New York that fears Saddam will use water purification parts to hurt his people or attack his neighbors.

And the bombs or missiles might miss. Or maybe they hit their target dead on, but the target isn’t what we thought it was. It isn’t an antiaircraft unit, it’s a family’s home–well, it used to be a family’s home. Apparently the family can “Suck This.” Even if it did strike its target, I wonder what the dying Iraqi soldiers thought about “Suck This.” Maybe they accepted the present with open arms, knowing that if a special U.N. committee in New York allowed this into the country, it must therefore bring a great sense of relief. And so it does.

How odd it is to celebrate anniversaries of death. 55 years ago today the first nuclear bomb was unleashed on a civilian population–an act hailed then and today as a weapon that saved American soldiers by ending the war earlier, although countless people disagree, pointing out Japan’s willingness to surrender and the use of a second atomic bomb. 10 years ago today devastating economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq–sanctions designed to stifle the regime, when they’ve only served to starve children. It makes for a depressing day. Yet I wonder if people today care. It’s pure and simple apathy that allows world tragedies to continue. If Americans really cared about Iraqi children dying, they could change things. But they don’t really care.

Tonight I saw a commercial for Fox’s Teen Choice awards. One of the ways they tried to advertise the award show was by claiming that there wouldn’t be any tributes to dead guys. Were they implying that teens don’t care about the accomplishments of people who have died? That teens just aren’t interested? That’s a very sad thing to assume of a generation, although I can’t help but wonder if Fox has made an understandable assumption.

Her name was Polly. A straw hat shielded her wrinkled face from the sun as she paced up and down the bridge. Her words were kind, yet full of compassion and urgency. She wasn’t the kind of woman who is content to retire and play shuffleboard. She smiles like my grandmother, yet carries a protest sign and is going three days without food. All for some children she’s never met halfway around the world.

5,000 children die every month in Iraq because of the U.N. sanctions. These sanctions are mainly kept in place by the United States as an effort to oust Saddam Hussein. The decade of sanctions have resulted in a million children dying while Saddam continues to maintain control of the country. The sanctions aren’t effecting him at all. Instead the innocent are dying.

And so Polly takes up a protest sign and marches along the Lake Street Bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul. The gospel has an answer to war: Love your enemy as yourself. You are your brother’s keeper. But nobody really believes it. Except for Polly.

While crossing the Lake Street Bridge today I noticed a small group of protestors. Curiously I turned, wondering what they were protesting. I didn’t know of any strikes in the area, and I wondered if it had something to do with the election or the Republican convention. As I passed by the signs spoke of thousands of children dying daily. Hand printed words spoke of an embargo that was choking a nation, killing its innocent children. They were protesting against the American-lead embargo against Iraq. The Gulf War was ten years ago, yet we’re still blocking food and medical supplies from Iraq. The children are dying, and for what? Kuwait has been free and I’m pretty sure I remember the war ending. Yet the embargo continues and nobody really cares or knows anything about it. As the protestors disappeared from view, I didn’t think much of it. And that’s the tragedy of it.

Another day, another book. This one slightly off-kilter. It was a book about a crazy man who didn’t seem to be bound by time. All the good books seem to be about crazy guys. Or at least people every one else thinks are crazy. When you completely understand someone they seem kind of shallow and boring. Those people never make good characters. They make good action heroes, but I’ve never met anyone who would make a good action hero.

The book I read was about war. I’ve always wondered what happens to people in war. Your mind is turned upside down, the best of people crack up, and the worst of people come together. Everything that you know is lost and you never see the world quite the same again. It’s an odd little thing we like to subject ourselves to every now and again. Sometimes you see hollow old men with their eyes sunken and the skin hanging from their throats. They fought in the war. Now that have just have memories more faded than the stale black and white photos. But they’re still haunted. Their world was shaken and they never quite reclaimed. Or maybe their world wasn’t so shaken. They went over there, did their job and came home. Those are the people I understand the least. Those are the people with no soul. You have to wonder how most men get through it. Do you just suck it up and squeeze the trigger? How can you walk so close to death for so long? Perhaps it’s simply a more enlightened way to live.

The old man lying in the bed, with a child’s lost gaze, fought in the war. He doesn’t recognize me and just wants to know where his teeth are. They’re loosely clenched in the palm of his hand. He’s my grandpa. He sat in the trenches at Iwo Jima, squeezing the rifle in his hands until his fingers turned pale like an onion. He clenched his teeth as the bullets whizzed by and he swore and he ran and he fell and fired that gun to save his own life. Or so the story goes. I don’t really know what he did in the war. I’ve only seen happy pictures of him and friends in the Pacific with girls. In the basement my dad has a knife my grandpa brought back from the war. Somebody made it out of pieces of scrap metal. The end of the handle is shaped like a boot. My grandpa traded somebody for it. I wonder if that guy died in the war. I wonder if his grandkid knows where whatever his grandfather got for the trade is.

But now I can’t even ask my grandpa about it. Maybe I could, they tell me he’s gotten better. The last time I saw him he was barely alive, sucking on a cigarette like it was the only thing he recognized. I think it was. So it goes. That’s what Kurt Vonnegut always said. I wonder if anybody knows how many times he said that in Slaughterhouse Five. That’s the book I finished. So it goes.

I always thought that since the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union came toppling down, the Cold War must have thawed out as well, like a bucket of ice cream on the counter. But apparently the threat of nuclear annihilation still plagues us all. As naïve as I must be, the threat of nuclear disaster will be with us forever. Since that fateful day in New Mexico more than fifty years ago man has been cursed with the ability to destroy himself—and to destroy himself pretty damn good.

The Cold War was fought on the basis of deterrence: if we can nuke them as bad as they can nuke us, then they won’t want to nuke us. Brilliant idea. Of course if anybody decides to get testy, the meek get screwed and cockroaches inherit the earth. Of course the Soviet Union collapsed and we won the Cold War. I don’t really know what we won, but it must prove capitalism can kick communist butt.

Now we jump ahead to today and the latest nuclear holocaust scenario. Now we’re not so worried about Russia as we are about all these little ragtag countries with nuclear capabilities. They probably couldn’t completely wipe us out, but they could take a nice bite out of Los Angeles. And our brilliant notion of deterrence doesn’t work anymore. You can’t point intercontinental ballistic missiles at every country on earth and dare them to so much as look at us the wrong way. Now the brilliant idea is to build a missile defense system. If they launch a missile at us, we’ll just blow it out of the sky.

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