Numbers

You know how when you want to assess the value of natural environments or human life for insurance purposes or countless other examples you discover that the only thing that has any voice and that counts towards determining the value of the thing in question are the numbers? Why does this not count in war?

Robert Fisk:

The obscene score-card for death in this latest war now stands as follows: 508 Lebanese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerrillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians.
In other words, Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israelis are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerrillas. The Lebanese Red Cross has found 40 more civilian dead in the south of the country in the past two days, many of them with wounds suggesting they might have survived had medical help been available.

Traveling in a bus on the route in Honduras two days ago we came across one of the ubiquitous converted schoolbusses used for public transportation here. A crowd had gathered. They were teenagers, playful, and the dull thought passed through my mind that school must be out for the day. Then I saw that a teenaged girl (probably teenaged, it was hard to tell), was lying under the bus. Her brown legs were crushed into a strange flatness under the front wheel. Her head was clearly split open and a pool of bright red blood had gushed from a now-nondescript, oddly shaped head. She wore a bright white blouse and red skirt. The other schoolkids might have been looking at their first dead person.