21st century barbarism

I never read editorials. I don't like that a group of people sitting in an office can shape the direction of the country by writing about places they've never been and people they've never spoken to. That said, I read today's Washington Post editorial about Iraq because it was the most-read story on the web site, and I felt compelled to link to it here.

I actually can't decide what I think about this piece on its merits. The only conclusion seems to be that the situation is bad in Baghdad, which anybody could have told you. But despite -- or maybe because of -- its lack of recommendations, I found it particularly powerful.

"ONE REASON the debate over Iraq can seem so perplexing at times is that the nature of the violence can be so horrendous as to be nearly unfathomable. The inexcusable killing of civilians by insurgents and militias is so common as to go almost unremarked upon. But four simultaneous truck-bomb explosions in one small community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night, all directed against defenseless civilians, provided a savage and jarring reminder."

Despite the fact that this writer has never been to Iraq, he managed to capture some pretty common sentiments among the people I interact with here. There's no difference other than scale between this attack and the ones that happen every day within a five-minute's drive of my office. But despite the fact that it's 250 miles away from here, this one feels particularly sobering.

In looking for the ways to solve Iraq, it always seems to be the people with the least information that have the loudest voices. My inbox is filling up again with e-mails from people saying everything from "that moron Bush needs to pull out right now!" to "stupid liberals need to stop supporting the enemy." And of course, those of us on the ground know that basically all of those people are wrong, because none of the answers here are simple. I'm glad an editorial acknowledged that for once.