Fall.

Editor,

Heaping adulation with the longest, most sustained applause of the evening on an unfortunate Army Ranger who endured horrible injuries and an even more horrible recovery as a consequence of the USA's pointless military adventure in Afghanistan struck me as grotesque.

This being the NY Times and I wanting to have my comment published I am restraining myself.

Suffice it to say, if we are talking about being shot in the head, I would much prefer to have seen Gabrielle Giffords presented as a representative of a cause that actually is deserving of long and sustained applause: ending gun violence within the borders of the USA.

To those whose knee-jerk reaction to my statement is that "people kill people," my response is this: Yes. American people kill thousands of people inside the United States every year, and the reason is that the United States is a violent culture, a culture that reaches for a gun to solve its problems.

As evidence I present the grotesque spectacle of an entire government applauding a man gravely wounded in a pointless war, a symbol of what the United States considers the most exemplary act of citizenship: invading, shooting, bombing, killing, and bravely falling to further . . . what?

Kill, bomb, shoot.

Applaud your warriors who fall with shrapnel in their heads.

Re: "The Diminished State of the Union" (1/29/2014)