Death at home and abroad

I’m writing this two days after the tragic mass murder of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. All of the news networks have converged on Blacksburg and since the massacre there has been around-the-clock coverage of every angle bearing on the tragedy. Dozens of pundits weighed in with their opinions, countless press conferences have been held and opinions of students, faculty, physicians, psychologists, police, politicians and others have been offered in Blacksburg and around the nation. I imagine that this story will still be prominently in the news by the time this letter is published.

Like most of you reading this I am profoundly moved by the brutality of the assault. Meanwhile the insanity in Iraq continues. As I write there’s a breaking news report that 198 people were killed today in four bombings in Baghdad. Details are sketchy, owing to the media’s concentration on the Virginia Tech story, but it is one of the most violent days of an occupation that has resulted in the deaths of 3300 American soldiers and 650,000 Iraqis.

John Donne wrote: "Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." As we are each diminished by the deaths of 32 students at an American University we must be immeasurably more so by the deaths of 3300 American soldiers and 650,000 Iraqis. The poet’s mournful bell tolls for us all.