Max, in the last two days I've read the opinions of at least thirty or forty people, ranging from professional authors to commenters on weblogs, concerning the death of Mr. Kelly. Aside from my insignificant self not one of these people had contemplated the awful spectre of death profoundly enough to even mention that other guy who died in that truck, OK? and he was one of ours, too - not to mention that sky high pile of uncounted blown-up Iraqi draftees.
I was born in Ohio in 1954. When I was eighteen I was in to math, science-fiction, girls and pop music; I wouldn't have volunteered for the CIA or the Mukhabarat, or the Green Berets or the Republican Guards.
But for the grace of God I could just as easily have been born in 1984 in Karbala, and where would I be today?
So y'all get all mushy over Michael Kelly, who at least was over there because he wanted to be, but since absolutely no one else in this country is doing so - as Jenny Brown notes in another post, nobody is even bothering to do a corpse-count - I'm going to think a while about all those apolitical eighteen year old Iraqi conscripts who won't see their nineteenth birthdays.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net