While Germany was engaging in peaceful elections and the United States was watching football – civilized societies being big on democratic rituals and sports – people in other parts of the world were relieving their frustrations in violence.

In Nairobi, a shopping mall was attacked and dozens of civilians slaughtered by al Qaeda-backed Somali terrorists.  In northwest Pakistan, suicide bombers killed 78 people in an attack during a Christian church.  In Baghdad, a car bomb killed sixty mourners at a funeral. In Afghanistan, where Americans are (still) fighting both their friends and their enemies, one of the former officers “wearing a security forces uniform turned his weapon against U.S. troops Saturday, killing three.”