Three thousand deaths.

The number of permanently maimed is much more difficult to track down. I’m not certain that mental scars will ever be tracked.

I was in a waiting room this afternoon waiting. There was a delay for my appointment. I took the opportunity to read a newspaper that was waiting there. On the same page where the installation of the first female “Speaker of the House of Representatives” was heralded, the number three thousand was mourned. The President is widely believed to be planning to send more troops in order to bring about a swift resolution to the matter.

I believe that a common definition of insanity is continuing to pursue the same behavior over and over again and expecting different results.

I felt a wave of sadness wash over me as read about three thousand deaths. I remembered back just three short years ago when this war was young and it was declared over. There had only been about a hundred deaths. Victory seemed to be in our grasp. And I remembered too, the walk we took the other day with the LightGrandParents on a Civil War battlefield not too far from our home. When the battle was looming, the hoi poloi from Washington DC packed picnic lunches and came out to watch the battle, surely the war was soon to be over. The date of the battle? August 22, 1861. The remainder of that war was no picnic.

War is indeed insanity.