

"Julius Caesar," Act 3 Scene 1

WASHINGTON - The dogs of war are snarling.

They strain forward, slavering, growling, pawing the air, eager to get at one another, to rend and tear and wet their lips with blood. As strangers in a dog park would, we try to pull them back, to exert control. But you feel your feet sliding beneath you, feel yourself carried, helpless and unwilling, into this fight they mean to have.

It strikes you how poor a leash is reason.



Read: Muslims.

And you wonder: Did this begin on Sept. 11, 2001, when putative Muslims crashed four planes full of innocent people? Did it begin on Nov. 5, 2009, when a putative Muslim shot fellow soldiers at an Army base in Texas? Did it begin when Cain slew Abel?

Does it matter?

The dogs of war are spoiling for this fight. So a putative Christian burns a Quran in Florida while others use arson to stop construction of a mosque in Tennessee. And now, there is this.






This is, perhaps, what Stephen Stills felt 45 years ago when a street fight between cops and kids set him to pondering where all of this during the 1960s was leading to.





All of it framed by a guitar slowly chiming two notes like yellow caution lights on a rain-slicked road. The songwriter felt a dread he could not name yet could not ignore.


Jaws open and eyes livid, the dogs of war leap.

And what can you do, except strain to hold them back? Reason is a flimsy leash, but it is the only leash we've got.

Leonard Pitts Jr. writes for the Miami Herald. Pitts won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. His column is distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.