What are we doing in Iraq? What is going on?

I’m in a lovely, secluded conference center at the moment in Queenstown, MD enjoying a rich conversation about academic leadership via the Lexington Seminar. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this kind of lovely context only makes me all the more conscious of my enormous unearned privilege, and the many ways in which it would be so much easier to simply forget what is going on in the “rest of the world.” BodyandSoul has a powerful weblog entry today where she reflects on what we do, and do not, know about what’s going on in Iraq. She feels like she’s in the “green twilight zone” — and I think I know what she means. Read it! She does a powerful job of linking off to major newspapers, and drawing together some rather scattered threads that are getting lost in the Alito hearings, and other “affaires du jour.”