There's a oak tree somewhere, in distant memory. It's not an old oak, it's not even a royal oak. It's just an oak, and it stands just beneath the crest of a hill spreading its branches. It's roots go deep, not because the water-level's low, but because there's grass on the ground and shallow roots would choke it. Instead of bare earth a green carpet stretches right up to the base of the tree, mingling with the moss that's starting to climb its flanks.
Now I'm a lover of comic books and of computer games; I experience the same bloody pleasure from each; yet I'm a pacifist, and I have qualms about my loves. I've seen pictures of the effects of war, real faces in real deaths, and it disturbs me when I play games that replicate this so easily. Under that tree's kin I'll have read books where my kin are torn and mutilated, and my enjoyment of this make-believe is ebbing, not with guilt but with moral repugnance.
Now Dubya and his kin would have us go to a war. Knowing the death this would involved I cannot agree, not unless more lives were lost in the inaction than in the action. Granted I value happiness too, but the fact that we all have but one life to live and that life would end in 500,000 cases in terrible pain and misery under Bush's plan seems a horrendous weight against his argument from the start. The argument has not been made with great care anyway, and with his WASP/harvard/business/religious background every move he makes is suspect. Saddam is not a nice man; but there is a feeling that George would be worse if he could be. For this reason the world's boisterous stand against the man fills my heart like bubbled molasses, and I thank the obstinate types of this world dearly, like they care.