Silencing voices

I know it has been ages since I wrote anything about Iraq or the war. Here is an interesting article on the Huffington Post from a lady who was based out of Baghdad for most of 2003 and 2004 speaking ambivalently about the war and her feelings about it. What was really interesting to me were the comments on the post.

There was zero thought on what was said - you can see in her post how scared she was already to be expressing anything but wholesale hatred towards the war on a blog known for “liberal” commenters. Unfortunately, her fears were right. There was the usual cacophony of “you are nuts!”, “we know better than you because the folks on the teevee said so!” and the usual, “but, but Bush screwed it up!”.

That was one of the reason I had stopped talking about the issue a long time ago. It was doing nothing for me in terms of interest and every post was simply a pissing match between the sides and people with something to prove - people who think they have all the answers - people to whom someone else’s conversation is only a time to gather their arguments, not to actually take the time and make the effort to listen.

The post was very interesting to me, so head on over and read it. I wish people were more willing to talk in terms of gray than plain, old black and white and stop reading one anothers’ minds.