The World Today

Writers are influnced and inspired to write about events and people they come in contact with. Which is why the Iraq war and the dismal state of politics and politicians in the U.S.A. is the subject of tons and tons of spilled ink. Sometimes, the pathos and the supreme stupidity of war and it's shattering effect on young lives, as narrated by writers, starts taking on ominous tones, and reader and writer can no longer hide behind a partisan divide.

Vengeance of the Victors
There may be some truth to all these claims—Iraq is a tough place—but the Bush administration is not quite so blameless. It thoughtlessly engineered a political and social revolution as intense as the French or Iranian one and then seemed surprised that Iraq could not digest it happily, peaceably and quickly. We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war.
By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek

America's Lost 3,000
But as we look backward at our lost 3,000, it's worth hoping one more time that the ending stanza for the paratroopers today will be better than Owen's. He was killed in action trying to take a canal from German defenses, just one week before the Armistice ended the war for good. He never saw his verse published in a book. War can make poets and war can kill them, one by one.
By Nathan Thornburgh, Time

What this basically means is that the the writers, and by implication, the magazines for which they write, have crossed an imaginary line and are now in tear-shedding mode. No solutions, no wise punditry. Just plain and simple grief. Inspired writing - Yes. But terrifying. And if you're not scared, now would be a good time to take off the blinkers. These are hard nosed columnists who have seen and been through a lot. When they start hiding behind inspired prose....