Necessary?

I understand that killing the al Qaeda leader al-Zarqawi is news. Regardless of what side of the political, ethical, and moral fence you are on, it is news. I do my best to stay current on the major happenings in the world and this is certainly something I count as news-worthy. However, is it really necessary to splash pictures of him covered in blood all over the main page of every major news website?! Regardless of whether or not this man was a monster, a martyr or a lunatic, it is still death and it is still sad and ugly and not to be glorified. In the picture on the CNN website of the press conference this morning they even went so far as to put the picture in a gold frame with a matte. At least that picture was cleaned up a little -- the one on ABCnews.com showed bloody and disfigured face. I don’t care who he was or what he did, I do not want to see a picture of him dead and I feel it is disrespectful. Some would argue that he deserves no respect. Maybe that is true. But I still can not find it in myself to celebrate his death.

I want to hate him, but I can't. He believed he was fighting for a just and honorable cause and was willing to die for it. True, I believe any cause that requires that thousands of innocent people be killed can not truly be "just"...but aren't we, as a nation, doing the same thing? As we see him, they see us. The only thing that allows us to feel superior and justified that we did not go in with the intent to kill thousands of unsuspecting innocent people simply because of their ethnicity (or did we?). Sure, we knew that could happen, but only under the definition of "collateral damage". Right? Then I hear that some of our Marine's slaughtered Iraqi civilians in a fit of rage over the death of one of their own. Do I believe it happened? Yes, I do. Was it justified? No. Is it forgivable? Thank God, I do not have to make that decision. Is it somehow, in the farthest depths of my mind, understandable? Maybe. I can not fathom the mental, emotional, physical and psychological strain that these men and women are facing. They are not trained for "counter-insurgency" they are trained for war. Perhaps the only ones who could truly relate are the veterans who came back from Vietnam labeled as "baby killers"; the ones who cracked under the same kind of extreme mental anguish of not knowing who to fight, who to trust and how to deal with blood running through the streets you walk in. All I know is that I can not judge any of these people because I do not know what I would do if my home and family were threatened on a daily basis, if all I had seen my entire life was killing, or if I had seen good man after good man fall to an invisible enemy.

We must allow ourselves to see BOTH sides of this ugly and bloody coin that has been flipped. Heads or tails...no one wins. When it comes down to it, in the perspective of eternity, al- Zarqawi is just as important to God as I am. So is the Iraqi woman that died when hit by stray gunfire, the baby born in Africa that did not even live through the day, the 18-year-old Marine who has learned to kill in retribution, the pastor from the church downtown, the pedophile serving time in an American jail for molesting a four-year-old, the President, the Prime Minister and every person drawing breath at this very moment. We are all the same and covered in the same grace that none of us deserves. Unfortunately I do not have hope that we will ever be able to see that.