People face life every day. On very few of those days the plain shadow of death falls, and when it does it seems sudden, unexpected, incomplete.

Life is a book that ends in the wrong place. It could be on a train, after a steamy love scene or during a part of the life that the author correctly thought should be skipped entirely. A void from which the main character never re-emerges.

Death is not talked about, except when there are rules. Families suffer death and then it becomes the only thing talked about. Then the thing that must not be talked about. Eventually reflection is possible.

This cultural tendency to shun death, and keep it away from the subject of living seems a good strategy. Do not upset Grandma with that kind of talk, that sort of imperative. The fact that it usually approaches like anything, without an instruction guide, makes us all the more mystified by the obvious change it brings.

The psychological effects of death in the family should not be discounted. The gross effect of war, the intrusion of American forces into a culture that does not respect its intrusion, but associates the arrival of these badly dressed warriors with the death of many of their own family members.

The only time war is justified is to undo an invasion. There is no such thing as improving a culture by killing certain members of it. Enmity causes power to be invested in fighting adversaries.

War is a disease and the cure – it requires plenty of human intelligence. Is death the end game in Afghanistan? Will the bodies of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda leaders be the only product that America can win from this adventure of revenge?

Or will they further invest themselves in “reforming” a culture they do not own or even understand very well?