Daily, as the days go by, the "us and them" mindset distinctions by which we characterize ourselves and our adversaries are becoming more and more odious and toxic to the cause of peace. Like little children we're reduced to retaliatory gestures and name calling - if "they" do this to "us", "we'll" do that to "them". We use all kinds of prejudicial language to denigrate our enemies as "despicable evil doers, murderous thugs and terrorists", and also to glorify our own troops as "fearless freedom fighters and heroes". "We" don't respect "them" - "they" don't respect "us" - and the measure of our mutual disrespect is the growing numbers of dead bodies strewn on foreign killing fields.

Attitude is often the decisive factor that makes the difference between "us" and "them" - between war and peace. The attitude of the Bush Administration was pre-set against Iraq. 9/11/2001 was called a "Wakeup Call from Hell", and though "9/11" had nothing to do with Iraq, it somehow became the rally call for making war on Iraq. We were informed that Iraqis couldn't be trusted, and that the "Mongol Hordes" would get us if we didn't get them first. The White House used defective intelligence reports and imaginary supplies of weapons of mass destruction to justify its case for war. Soddam Hussein and Iraq were continuously characterized as "dispicable evil doers" and an imminent threat to world peace. The fearsome idea was that Saddam and Iraq would be the source the next "Wakeup Call from Hell". In May 2003 the Iraq War was started unilaterally, without justification, in a cloud of intense name calling, and the perverse assumption that Americans who didn't wave the flag were somehow unpatriotic.

Today, more than a year later, the name calling continues. We found Saddam Hussein hiding in a rat hole, but found no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to Al Qaeda, no 9/11 capabilities, and the War itself is mired down in some kind of terminal malaise of hostile invective, wherein noone knows how to end the hostilities. "They" might have hated Saddam Hussein, but now they hate George Bush more - for trying to play Allah with their country. The unwanted residuals of this poorly conceived war are more than 7,000 dead Iraqis, thousands of wounded Americans in hospitals far from home, uncounted numbers of body parts rotting in Iraq's noonday sun, and daily deliveries of flag draped coffins to the Dover AirForce Base.

It would take a paradigm shift in favor of our common humanity if we could/would learn to respect our fellow humans, all of them, and gave each of them the freedom to live their lives as Nature or God intended. Then war and killing would become irrelevant, unnecessary, and known for what it truly is: inhumane, criminal, cruel and wrong. Genocide would become an aberration of ancient history, occasioned only to accidental insanity and a misplaced disregard for people's civil rights and the Golden Rule. This may seem obvious to the Christians, Muslims and Jews among us - for they are universally informed by faith that the human spirit is precious and sacred in the eyes of God. Even the atheists among us can accept a peace based on the moral propriety of the Sixth Commandment and the Golden Rule.

As for the "Us/Them Divide" - the obvious answer is not to dig that hole any deeper - for the war hawks among us to turn off the patriotic twaddle about "the bravery of our fearless fighting men and women". Those soldiers are out there following George's orders. They aren't being paid for heroics and bravery, and they are tired of being pawns for the military-industrialists here at home who are profiteering on their efforts overseas and sucking the vitality out of our American economy. Serious questions remain: How do you end a war if noone capitulates and noone says they're sorry - how do you end a war that has no reason for being ??? We need to get beyond the "us" and "them" mindsets that propogate fear and hate, and rethink our foreign policy in terms of our "Common Humanity".