With a few exceptions, the media have phrased the past five months as a contest of wills between Bush and Saddam Hussein, not as a moment of deragement between two armed madmen willing to order their young to slaughter each other. Analysis -endless analysis- has been offered about the two men's tactics, as if they were coaches preparing for the Super Bowl.

Bush spoke of another principle, that a just war must "support a just cause." In the Persian Gulf, he said, "our cause could not be more noble." What nation has ever said its war was not noble?

Flacks for both war-obsessed governments immediately blamed the other side for the deaths of the civilians.

Wars aren't stopped by fighting wars, any more than you can fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. You fight violence with nonviolence.