Death and then more war

I am more of a pacifist than I'd like to believe.
I don't support the killing of anyone.
I don't support any war.
I get that sometimes it's "necessary" but the days of the World Wars have long since collapsed into wars of greed masked with good intentions.
The best of intentions don't always lead to the best of outcomes - instead, we find ourselves mired in wars we can't pay for, wars that kill our naive kids, wars that tear apart families and countries yet don't bring the peace we'd hoped for.
The rebuilding takes years. The pain lasts forever.
The world is not a better place for our occupations; it's merely a little bit more burdened, heavy with the right hand of America, that democratic bastard.

I don't believe anyone should be celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. I don't think we've done anything other than kill someone else. He'll become a statistic, as monumental as the toppling of the statue that stood in Baghdad. This day will be a memory. Nothing more. It is not the end. There is no winning. Not even Charlie Sheen can say that today.

And while I do appreciate that it's finally done - and now hopefully our tides of propaganda can shift our focus elsewhere - I regret that it's taken so long, taken so many misfires, taken so much American abuse of lands and peoples that don't belong to us.

And of course, we didn't even tell Pakistan we were going to do it. I understand why. But I think it will ultimately hurt our already fragile relationship with that country.

We dumped his body in the sea. I will give us credit for supposedly giving him a proper goodbye according to Islamic law.

In and out, swift justice for the wounded, for the dead, for the future.
Is it really justice?
Was it really worth it?

Is all that death for one life justification of creating the hell we thought we were trying to end?

Now let's move on.
We'll take the soft uptick in the markets that is sure to follow, we'll take the slight jump of poll numbers, we'll take the fuzzy bipartisan feelings reminiscent of a night spent on ecstasy, but we shouldn't let it swell our already full heads.

I read one blog today that mentioned planting peace roses.
I'm for that.
Let's remind the world that all this bombing and killing and bloodshed is supposed to achieve one thing: peace.

Don't tell your kids we won.
We didn't.
Because there is no we.

(I was listening to a man on NPR talk about Muslims and how he didn't feel any negativity towards them - good, why should he? - and how they felt the same way "we" did. Thanks man, for really showing the separation "we've" created. Who is us and what are they?)

Teach peace and compassion.
Teach understanding and love.
And hope that somewhere, some of those lessons take root in our souls.