Looking for a solution

As images and details continued to flow out of North Ossetia in the wake of last week’s dreadful carnage in Beslan, the human heart sank.

What motive could be so powerful as to provoke the willful taking of the lives of children?

What cause could be so blindingly important that the classroom becomes a blood-soaked battlefield?

And how do human beings respond to such behavior but with bitterness, rage, and anger of their own?

We don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but we can’t be optimistic about what lies ahead.

Violence begets violence, and there’s no point in arguing whether Russian heavy-handedness in Chechnya sparked the actions of cruel extremists or vice versa.

The game is under way, just as surely as the tit-for-tat, bomb-for-bomb exchange between Israelis and Palestinians goes on and on until the rest of the world grows increasingly numb.

That’s one of the dangers for those of us on the sidelines, that we might become so inured to instances of ethnic, religious, or political violence that it becomes part of the wallpaper of modern life.

For humanity’s sake, that can’t be allowed to happen. — J.R.

[[In-content Ad]]