Because Pope John Paul II was the world’s biggest peace activist, he was often at odds with American foreign policy, the current war in Iraq being just the latest example.

With the Terry Shivo case preceding the Pope’s death there had been a lot of talk lately especially from the Bush administration and the most conservative members of Congress about preserving the sanctity of life at every stage of human development, no matter what the cost.

I wonder where the term “collateral damage” would fall in the cultural conservative world view as it pertains to the sanctity of life.

I read an article recently that the US military is not required to count the number of Iraqis killed during the present war, which seemed odd.

We count so many other things, why not count Iraqis?

I mean we count calories, free throws, laps in the pool to make a mile,
test scores in grammar school, batting averages, marriages that end in divorce.

We count bombs dropped, money spent, overweight Americans, disabled veterans.
We count books, magazine and newspaper revenues.
We count taxes raises, services cut, taxi medallions in NY City.

We count goods imported,
Merchandise returned,
Miles per hour,
Miles per gallon.

With the help of Carbon 14,
We know exactly how old the Great Sphinx is.

So here’s a riddle:

If life is so important,
If it is the ultimate freedom for which we will fight,
For which we will kill,
For which we die,
For which we will spend our billions,
Then why don’t we count the lights extinguished in the eyes of the enemy?

More by Jimmy and information about upcoming performances at the Off-Broadway Theater

Come on!
We count Sundays in May,
shopping days left to Christmas,
the Stations of the Cross.
We count pedophile priests,
We have a registry just for sex offenders,
We count people in prison,
people on welfare,
people without health insurance,
We count the unemployed,
if they are officially registered as being such.

Bushels of wheat in the state of Kansas,
Athletes feet in the in the state of California.

We count the number of wolves in North America,
Moose in the state of Maine,
Whales off the coast of Provincetown,
Whales on the coast of Provincetown.

We count people killed at the Alamo,
People Killed at Wounded Knee,
People killed at Custer’s Last Stand,
People killed in Vietnam.

We count Israelis killed by suicide bombers,
Palestinians shot with rubber bullets,
Moslems on the Pilgrimage to Mecca,
We count the total amount of rainfall in the city of Seattle in 1975.

We count salmon swimming upstream,
The wind-chill factor, 
Every dip and rise in the stock market
from the last 5 minutes to the last 50 years.

We count miles from the sun;
Miles from the moon;
The strides of a race horse down to the hundredth of a second,
Punches thrown in the light heavyweight division.

We count total minutes talked on a cell phone,
Minutes from the meeting of the Chamber of Commerce
Minutes of a trial,
Minutes in traffic,
Minutes in a marathon.

We count seconds at the dinner table,
Seconds at the swim meet,
Second hand clothes dropped off at the shelter.

We count the homeless to the best of our ability.

But it’s tough. They move around a lot, have a tendency to sleep in a different place every night, don’t always have identification, or register themselves as officially being homeless.

But the dead are usually there in plain view for the counting. Granted some are hidden beneath the buildings, or blown away like suicide bombers. But even the remains of the suicide bombers are traced and identified and documented as to their identity and that of their family and friends and villages from which they came and organizations who sent them on their indefensible mission.

The lifeless of Iraq present an even more difficult challenge than counting homeless.

Their names and faces and occupations make us uneasy.
Their families cause us to pause.
Their widows give us grief.
Their orphans bring us shame.
A million times more shame than Saddam Hussein ever had for them.
Because we know better.
We were taught differently.
It’s part of our religion.
Thou shall not kill.

So we create a category for the sake of our own collective conscious and tell ourselves their numbers don’t really matter.

For our own benefit we don’t count them

Which seems strange after all the effort,
all the money,
and all the risk involved to kill them.
In the final analysis we don’t even count them,
because to do so would admit guilt.

It’s interesting what we do count.

The dwindling budgets of public schools and libraries on whose shelves we count how many books of poetry remain.

How do I love thee? How do I love Thee?  How do I love Thee?

Let me count the ways.