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April 25, 2005
Marla
One Saturday in Iraq, on a busy stretch of road far from U.S. checkpoints, anti-democratic terrorists murdered an acqaintence of mine—Marla Ruzicka.
We met at the home of Eli Lake, a New York Sun reporter who regularly scoops the bigger media on national security and middle-eastern affairs. A few of us stepped outside to smoke and talk about Iraq, where each of us had been. She seemed incredibly intrepid; a short blonde who didn't like guns journeying into war zones to help the people that the cameras ignore.
She was anti-war and dedicated to helping people in Afghanistan and Iraq, facts that even Time manages to get right.
But the larger signifigance of her murder, which was missed by Time, is noted by the Belmont Club, a consistently interesting and intelligent blog. She was killed by a roadside bomb, the kind where the killer chooses a victim at distance and triggers the blast.
In the Vietnam era, liberals decried "push button wars." Now, when they are carried out by an enemy that many grandly call the "insurgency," they shrug.
In our one real conversation, she said that she was going back to Iraq. She was going back to help; she was a brave humanitarian. She was 28.
Posted by Richard Miniter at April 25, 2005 06:35 AM