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I read this article because of their pictures. They seemed so alive with possibility. Hoping against all better judgment, I thought, "maybe this time there will be something good that comes out of it." But there wasn't anything to peg my hopes on, in the end.
I watch the faces of the dead flash by, after the News Hour, read the names and recite the towns from which they came. "So young," I think, "He was a shy one, but so proud to be in uniform," or "45, his children and his wife must be utterly destroyed by his absence."
How have I become so powerless to make things different? How can these horrors be happening on my watch?
When I used to read about wartime Germany -- the inhumanity of it -- I would always think, "Why didn't the good Germans do anything to stop it? There had to be a lot of good Germans. Why were they so silent?" Now I know how futile compassion can be, how all the marching and protesting and writing letters to congress and the news media can be so utterly useless.
When will it end?
