Steve Duin, columnist with The Oregonian, has had enough of Americans silently accepting their complicity in the pointless, brutal deaths of troops like Army Pfc. Tom Tucker of Madras and Spc. Robert Jones of Milwaukie. He finds the moments of silence at their funerals indicative of how we all have become silent allies in Bush's war.

Other than the devastated families in Madras and Milwaukie, Talent and Estacada, Winston and Elgin, few of us still feel the shock waves. We are removed from the battlefield, disconnected from the war's $8 billion monthly bill, desperate to believe these horrific deaths serve a grander purpose than keeping a Republican in the White House.

We watch the families reach agonizing consolations -- Wes Tucker wondered aloud Wednesday if his son's gruesome death was retaliation for the U.S. military's conduct at such places as Abu Ghraib and Haditha -- then silently move on. We can't even generate the passion to protest this painfully mismanaged war.

And he's right. Some of us speak out, and others of us protest, but most Americans have more passion for American Idol and gas prices than the daily ritual of IED roulette being played in Iraq. I know I have given far more energy to the World Cup than doing anything to help stop this war. Every day I am silent or inactive is one more day of guilt on my head.

Read "Mutilated Beyond Recognition" and then join me in ending your own silence.