i haven't blogged about the war very much lately; there hasn't been much to say. or maybe there's been too much to say.

but the recent escalation of violence, especially given the involvement of the shiite majority, is something new indeed.

sorrow is an appropriate response, even for those of us who are sitting in offices or living rooms, reading the battles in the paper or watching them on cnn. sorrow is appropriate not only because of the death and destruction in iraq, but because of the muddled intentions and catastrophically politicized "intelligence" that put all these american soldiers, and all these iraqis, in harm's way in the first place. thinking about the mutilations in fallujah, one wonders what incites folks to such despicable violence. it is not, as political spinners would have it, that they "hate freedom" or are somehow less than human. those are the boringly easy answers designed to divert americans' attention from one fact: violence begets violence. american war on iraq has managed to replace a brutal, home-grown, and largely secular tyrant only with a foreign occupying force and, in opposition, a brutal religious fanaticism. not to mention internal ethnic and religious divides that american "planning" conveniently disregarded a year and more ago.

so. now that americans are firmly entrenched, we wish for nothing so much as a way out. we've set a date and claimed to be on course for an experiment in democracy. but is there an honorable way for us to leave, when the country we claimed to be "liberating" is still reeling this way?