In his penultimate NYT column, following the events of the 13th of November in Paris—not those in Pakistan, Mali, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria—, well-meaning Roger Cohen didn’t hesitate to throw oil on the fire and call for rage. The US president was too cerebral, not emotional enough, not in the holy rage that events demanded. Yesterday, he wrote another noise-and-fury column in the reminiscing mode. The rotting bodies of war, pockets made by battlefield thieves, the personal letters scattered, never to be read by their loved ones, all of this via Hemingway. It could have been Hugo’s Les misérables: “Après les vainqueurs viennent les voleurs”. One of the commentators, JL Albrecht, gives shape to what I thougt upon reading a column in which compassion for the victims of war struck me as  not paradoxical at all and continuing the thread of his previous column: passion and rage at the service of glorious causes. In the present column, compassion serves as excuse and mask for indulging an all-swallowing rage and fury. It does more than justify it, it  makes it holy and removes it from any critical discourse. That kind of passion is an engine that knows no left or right:

Mr. Cohen says the world needs the absence of bad luck to avoid death in combat. What I really think is a single non-printable word, but what I’ll write is that attitude is a huge dodge. Countries “go to war”, they don’t “appear at war”. Soldiers don’t just “show up” on battle fields. Someone sends them there.

It starts with politicians and pundits inflaming people, giving in to the common human failures of racism and xenophobia. Little men with little minds saying the only way to be strong is to wage war, as in Mr. Cohen’s last column. It ends with the Joneses next door losing their son, along with a lot of other families losing loved ones.

In sports we note that it is those that practice the most that have the most “luck” on the field. In politics and punditry it is the same. Practice humility, humanity, and equality; you’ll be amazed how much “luck” we’ll have avoiding war.