Steven Vincent was murdered in Iraq a bit over a year ago. He was a journalist traveling the countryside, neither embedded with the troops nor protected by his country. He sought to understand the war in an unmediated, ground-level fashion, and transmit his findings to us all. He was executed for his troubles.
I didn't read his writing at the time, didn't read his blog or his dispatches. I wish I had. About a week ago, a blogburst was organized in his honor, a sort of virtual remembrance of the man and his work. I found there to be something exquisitely touching in that -- this war, and this country, forgets so fast, and it's so rare to see a dead man's work given one more shot at life. Honoring a fallen journalist by taking their labor seriously is a beautiful way to commemorate the loss -- it doesn't rely on a sappy oversimplification of their life or virtues, it just lets them speak, one last time, for themselves, and allows them one more chance to make us understand what they were striving to explain. We don't have to agree, we just get to hear. And it's worth it, for all of us, to try and listen.
