Riverbend's back!

... with a post discussing the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study on war-related Iraqi deaths. There is great rejoicing on DailyKos and elsewhere as fears for her safety are allayed.

It must be strange -- both exhilarating and intimidating -- to have so many people around the world hanging on one's words while living in the middle of a violently disturbed society in which one's own safety may very well depend on being, and remaining, anonymous. Lapsing into long silences is an understandable response. What would you do, if you were an educated, modern, twenty-something woman in today's Iraq?

Although bright and knowledgeable as ever, it seems to me she sounds a bit weary and depressed. Not only weary of living with the deadly dangers and constant small annoyances of a country wracked by invasion and civil war, but of reading the self-promoting internet pundits who pontificate about the horrors and tragedies taking place in her backyard as dispassionately as they might discuss the weather or the latest stock market reports. And perhaps weary of the stress and responsibility of being regarded as representative of an entire culture.

As Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar points out, many of us on this side of the great divide must look into the mirror of her allusions to internet pundits and see some hint of ourselves. And, in the process, contemplate our own complicity in the crimes of our government.

Perhaps we voted against Bush. Perhaps we've whined and bitched online. Is that enough?

If the November elections on Diebold machines inexplicably yield Republican "victories" despite overwhelming opposition in nonpartisan exit polls, and Bush proclaims this as a "mandate" for yet more disastrous adventures, what will be "enough" then?

It's wonderful to know that Riverbend, whoever she is, has not become a casualty of Bush's cynical war. I hope that one day she will be able to write freely and casually and openly about recipes, or music, or books, or computers, or politics, or whatever takes her fancy, without cause for fear. About family gossip, or friends' escapades, or silly jokes, or some circumstances happier than present ones. Or choose not to write if she prefers, without giving rise to fears that such silence portends disaster.