IT'S HARD TO WRITE about the bombing attacks in London yesterday. Not for just the obvious reason -- that the mind boggles and the heart shrinks from close examination of such horror -- but also because this kind of event seems to evoke the same pattern of commentary over and over. Physical descriptions of the carnage. Analysis of the patterns and details, speculation on who did it, how they did it, why they did it, what it means, how we should react, how we should feel. Tales of close calls, near-misses, coincidence, weird strokes of luck, amazing and inexplicable flashes of intuition that spared lives; bad luck and terrible timing that cost lives.

It's inherent in humans to want to know why things happen -- especially terrible things. Sometimes there are no quick and obvious answers. But if we aren't sure what the cure is, at least we can make an educated guess about what has not worked. If we can't develop policies from those insights that put us on a more positive path, then there is a lot more senseless killing and a lot more heartache ahead.