BLOODIED HANDS

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. ~~Mark Twain

The words of Mark Twain ring true on this day as word emerges from Afghanistan that a soldier in the United States Army who was stationed in Afghanistan, left his barracks, walked to the nearby village of Alkozai (in the Kandahar province) and slaughtered sixteen innocent women and children in cold blood with his army-issued rifle.

In the days, weeks and months ahead many will busy themselves trying to answer the question "why", but no amount of internal examination or reflection will change the fact that war placed that soldier in the country where this atrocity was committed. However we try to repudiate and distance ourselves from the senseless violence that soldier committed, the blood of those sixteen innocent victims will remain on our hands. We sent that soldier to Afghanistan to kill, and he did.