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Infinite war proximity, zero moral proximity. Steve Bowbrick in The Guardian:

Our proximity to the fighting is unarguable. The collision of network-era news gathering tools, weblogs and interconnected internet communities will produce a kind of ecstasy of information and communication. The war will be fought as if it were on the other side of the thinnest sheet of glass. It will be as if we are there.

But will our high definition connections with the front line and the increasingly powerful illusion of understanding provided by the weblogs and news sites genuinely close the gap of understanding? As we get closer to events, have we gained any moral proximity? Are we any closer to genuine connection with those affected by war, with the effects of our judgments and those of our leaders? The answer, inevitably, is no.

All the technological superiority in the world does not make Americans or the British morally superior. To borrow Clarence Thomas's phrase, the Iraqi people will be subjected to a "high-tech lynching."

The author Steve Bowbrick also writes bowblog.

UPDATE: In this bowblog post, commenter Mike Butcher points us to the personal word-, photo- and audioblog of CNN correspondent Kevin Sites who is now in northern Iraq.

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