The time goes by. What I see is ....
Everyone still has to die. Everyone still has to be parted from the beloved. And everything is still changeable. So there is nothing special.
One is inferior and another superior. One perishes in infancy and another at the age of hundred. One is sick and infirm, and another strong and healthy. One is brought up in luxury and another in misery. One is a genius and another an idiot. So still there is nothing special.
One likes another one. One hates another one. One group thinks what they are doing is right; others doing is wrong. Another group thinks what they are doing is right; others doing is wrong. And because one's action can affects another's way of life/living, this can lead to a fight. In big scale, this may become a war or a new kind of war like terrorist attacks, as some groups of people said. But I think it's still just a result of disagreement between 2 group of people who are not able to see more truths about what they believe.

No matter what truth is behind this, when there is a war, it meas the death of many people. Now the war has started already. For people who believe in God, one thing one can do is to pray for a minimal number of casualty.
For my opinion, it does not quite make sense having this war. The president of the US and his team are afraid that Saddam may use chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction attack the country. His solution is sending several hundred thousand of American soldiers to Iraqi land to have war with Iraq, which NOW we are getting reports of American casualties from. How many more? Nobody knows. What I'm telling you here is that the attack from Saddam hadn't happened yet; nobody hadn't died yet at the time. But the President sent several hundred thousand of American soldiers to the war and NOW reports of casualties are coming. Who knows for sure if the attack from Saddam to the US will happen? The Saddam now is weak because of what the US and UN has done to Iraq all over the period of 12 years until now. The Saddam may be tired of those bad things he did. He may decide not to do bad thing more. He could see Bin Laden as an example. Bin Laden has to escape, doesn't live happily, became international most wanted.
Even though the Saddam decide to attack the US, we (FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies) may stop the plan before it's executed. Even though the plan is executed, who knows how many American people will die? More or less than the number of American soldiers casualties from this happening war. Even more, for this case, the US will get big supports from all over the world too. Many soldiers from different countries will join the army to destroy Saddam regime, I believe, not mainly American soldiers as it is right now and a lot of protests around the world, including American own people.

Now the American soldiers are in Iraqi land. Before the war, Saddam might have not decided yet about using chemical and biological weapons but now he is in the conner, which Bush and his team push him into, he may decide to use those weapons, just waiting for the right time for the worst result. And this is his own land, Iraq. Or those high range in the goverment know that now there is no such weapons. It's gone. It's destroyed already!!!!

Almost everyone, if not all, believe the US and its allies will win. Then what? I mean is anyone sure if it's worth for American and its allies? Who knows for sure about the consequences, especially from other countries? Many people see that America now is different, didn't listen to the UN, started the war, etc. I hope this act by the US won't lead to worse things.

"Victory breeds hatred; the defeated sleeps in misery. One who has calmed down sleeps in comfort, having given up victory and defeat." ~ the Buddha

The next 4 paragraphs are excerpts from "Buddhist Reflections on the New Gulf War" by David R. Loy. It's interesting so I want to share with you:

...But there is another, special insight that Buddhism has to offer here. It is connected with anatta, the “no-self” teaching. Anatta means that our core is hollow. The shadow-side of this emptiness is a sense of lack. Our no-self means we feel groundless, and that often makes life a futile quest to make ourselves feel more real. Individually, we seek being in symbolic ways such as money, fame, or through the eyes of our beloved. Yet there is also an important collective dimension that feeds ideologies such as nationalism and group struggles such as war. We are always relieved to discover that the sense of lack bothering us is due to something outside us – personified in the enemy, who therefore must be defeated if we are to become whole and healed.

That is why war is sacred, and why we love violence. It seems to give us clear purchase on the sense of lack that otherwise tends to haunt us in an amorphous way. Violence focuses the source of our dissatisfaction outside us, where it can be destroyed. No wonder, then, that people tend to rejoice when war finally breaks out, as even Freud and Rilke initially did at the beginning of the first world war. We feel newly bonded with our neighbors in a struggle that is no longer unconscious but something we have some conscious control over. Our problem is no longer inside us, but the evil that is over there. In Afghanistan. Or Iraq.

When wars and revolutions do not bring us the salvation-from-lack we seek, though, we need repeated wars and continual revolutions. Since we can never fill up the hole at our core in this way and make ourselves really real, we always need a new devil outside us (or inside us: a “fifth column” of Islamic terrorist cells) to rationalize our failure and fight against. We hide this fact from ourselves by projecting our victory sometime into the future. If Afghanistan didn’t give us the security we crave, defeating Iraq will. When that doesn’t quell our festering sense of collective lack, we’ll find some other evil to fight. North Korea, anyone?

IF YOU'RE TIRED OF WORLDLY WAY, TRY DHAMMA WAY.

Million years ago human beings may use stones as weapons, present day using airplanes hit buildings. It seems to me what we could do during the period of million years is going faster (much much faster) but in the circle. We still didn't go anywhere. And made me think of a spider trapped by its own webs.

Many people still take advantage over other people who are inferior (Million years ago: physical inferiors, now: intellectual inferiors.) Lack of compassion. Human beings still have BIG problems. Those are to deal with 1) their insatiable craving, 2) hatred, and 3) delusion
In collective form, there is institutionalized greed (e.g., corporations), institutionalized ill will (e.g., the military industrial complex) and institutionalized delusion (e.g., the media).

Some groups of people at the moment they are going to die, they are softly smiling, they are in peace or pray because they believe they are going to meet God (including those terrorist attacking on Sep.11!, killing thousands of people) Some other groups try to find every way not to die, give a huge amount of money to doctors or scientists (instead of millions of starving children who are going to die) to do research like Cloning (which is a very controversial topic because some groups say that it is taking other lives), use life-support systems with interlacing tubes going into bodies to keep those people alive, and many other ways that this group try to do. A main reason is they are afraid of losing their wealth if they die, they have a huge number of possessions (making me thinking of those notorious CEO of American giant companies who cheat their own employees), they just realize that they can't take their possessions and their reputation with them if they die (before this they ONLY know but not realize). And anyway, they have to die.
However, what I just mentioned above is worldly ways of lives. So if you're tired of worldly ways, try Dhamma ways, which is about the happiness experienced from worldly non-attachment.