Every evening, at the end of PBS News Hour, one of the most respected news programs in the United States, one can see images of American soldiers killed the previous day. They usually are young men, generally between 20 and 25 years of age.

Even the most hardened person cannot but feel a pang of anguish looking at these young people whose lives have been cut short by an irrational war. And one can imagine how many vibrant lives have been lost and will be lost until the war in Afghanistan ends.

Awful as these losses are, we should consider another reality: images of some other soldiers degrading Afghan prisoners. The images tell us that the soldiers' lives have been compromised by war and, equally terrifyingly, war has changed them, too. It has made them lose that essential human value that makes us respect other people at their most basic level. And we suddenly have a vision of the essential evilness of war.