Pray for Iraq. Pray for America. Pray for the world. Pray for the future. Pray for peace.

James Carroll says it so much better than I do.

"If Washington were the target of a ''shock and awe'' campaign, the US Capitol would now be rubble, along with that entire parade of becolumned federal buildings astride seven blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House a smoldering ruin (like Camp David -- and the Bush ranch house in Crawford, Texas). The Pentagon a fetid sinkhole, in-rushing waters of the adjacent Potomac River having snuffed the burning abyss....Such is a ''limited'' campaign, targets chosen ''humanely'' according to a strategy of ''decapitation.'' We can leave until later the question of who and how many are dead and wounded.

And what, exactly, would justify such destruction? What would make it an act of virtue? And is it possible to imagine that such violence could be wreaked in a spirit of cold detachment, by controllers sitting at screens dozens, hundreds, even thousands of miles distant? And in what way would such ''decapitation'' spark in the American people anything but a horror to make memories of 9/11 seem a pleasant dream? If our nation, in other words, were on its receiving end, illusions would lift and we would see ''shock and awe'' for exactly what it is -- terrorism pure and simple."

The talking heads can call it what they will. The analysts, the military jargon...it all amounts to one thing. We are destroying, and through these steps, unsanctioned, unsought, we may be destroying ourselves. Even those countries that blocked the war are ready to take advantage of it--Turks on the border, French afraid they'll be shut out of lucrative "rebuilding" contracts.

Did anyone bother to ask the people of Iraq what they wanted?

Oh, that's right, they're "barbarians" who have been brainwashed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Americans call foul because al-Jazeera dares to show pictures of our dead. Arabs say Americans are too isolated from violence of this nature. Peace supporters e-mail out appeals for as graphic of photos as possible (yes, I got one of those) to show the American people what they haven't seen in an effort to spur a collective conscience.

And in the end, what's left are families left to mourn fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends. When all is said and done, that's what's real. Not the rhetoric of celebrities, or the demands of presidents. There is blood, and sand, and weeping. There may be victory, liberation, jubilation--but let's hope that peace endures longer than all the rest.