I'm in Ireland, yet I'm certainly aware that it's a Middle Eastern custom to fire guns in the air at celebrations of all kinds. Not a very bright one - but then there are Irish customs that undoubtedly the Middle Eastern world would find equally stupid.

There seems to be a game of "who hurts most" going on here; let's not show each other our scabs, please.

All of us in the west have been hurt by the crushing of the World Trade Centre twin towers and surrounding buildings; Ireland lost more citizens than any other country outside the US, as it happens. But to many *outside* the US it seems illogical to bomb Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, rather than refusing to trade with Saudi Arabia, for instance, where the centre of the Bin Laden movement apparently was or is; or (maybe even more wild an idea) trying to see why people should hate western capitalism enough to want to kill 3,000 people.

These are not bad people, though they do bad things. Surely we can find a better way out of this awful tangle than killing more and more people?

As for the little girl "still wearing her party dress", those unfamiliar with bombs perhaps don't realise that those caught at the centre of a bombing normally have their clothes blown off; those closer still have limbs blown off; those at the centre explode themselves.