Grozny in Ruins

The photograph on your Feb. 7 front page of the ruins of Grozny had a profound effect on me impossible to explain.

The ruins of Grozny reminded me of drawings and pictures I have seen of the ruins of ancient civilizations by past artists showing the destruction of centuries--Athens, Rome, monasteries in England, fallen castles, almost-concealed vine-covered walls of abandoned cottages in Ireland. But the ruins of Grozny are recent and reveal the growing ability to destroy something in a short time that has taken decades to build.

Where people once lived, walked, raised their children, prayed, earned their bread, suffered and buried their dead, no human is visible. Unseen shattered lives are not shown but they are there. Not even the trees escaped the massive power to destroy. Such devastation is a black mark on all of us. When will we learn?

FLORENCE RICHARDS

Whittier

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Could there be a better caption for the photo of Grozny (the devastated and leveled Chechen capital) than the romantic poet Shelly’s pithy critique of the fruitlessness of war, in the poem “Ozymandias”: “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, / the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

DEAN JAMES LOOMOS

Venice