Sometime in the middle of the past turbulent week, a week in which I mourned a personal hero and watched an old friend but political stranger elected to the U.S. Senate, I realized that we were killing people.

In Yemen, we stalked a suspect (an important word in a democracy) in the planning of the USS Cole bombing until he and his traveling companions were vulnerable and isolated in the desert. The unmanned drone then incinerated the vehicle and the people. The official statement characterized the U.S. actions as an "assassination," and press reports mentioned limbs being airborne. Press photos showed a burnt spot evoking the remains of Wile E. Coyote after a case of TNT had blown him to bits.

In Virginia, the prosecutors are making a case for getting first swat at the suspected (that word again) snipers. Virginia's prosecutors say that they can do a better job, because they, and not Maryland, have the unique capacity to put a minor to death. The assumption is that this is the preferred outcome. A 17-year-old who appears to have been pathologically abused, neglected and manipulated through dependency on an adult is in the crosshairs of our highest authorities. They want him dead.

I am uncertain when our government became so comfortable with killing as a solution, but I don't remember anyone running for office on a platform of carnage. Nevertheless, there has been no outrage expressed, no horror spoken of the theme of the month, or perhaps the decade. The solution to the problem of fear appears to now include ending the lives of those we suspect, or those too young to know better.

In a week when our citizens participated in the most sacred of democratic processes, I became afraid. America has, as a people, affirmed an administration that surpasses any in the past for its secrecy and brutality. Through open admissions of assassinations and a lust for the throat of Saddam Hussein, our administration has succeeded, it seems, in lulling us into believing that this is normal.

It is not normal. It is not American. It is barbarism masquerading as principle.

The day has come when we near a point of no return – resorting to very bloodthirstiness and ruthlessness of those we politically and diplomatically condemn will ultimately blunt our ability to hold our leaders to a standard of fairness, democracy and reason.

Our recent elections discouraged many into resignation. Settling into defeat and complacency is the worst that we can do. Let these newly elected public officials know that killing is not the solution — that reason and justice, fairness and democratic principles, open government and a reliance on the rule of law will give us the result we want, and that we need not kill people to accomplish it.

Sepler (e-mail: fseppy@attbi.com) of Mendota Heights, Minnesota is a trainer-consultant dealing predominantly with workplace issues.

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