I haven’t posted anything political for a while – or not overly so. But Kevin Sites, whose weblog I have cited numerous times before, was the journalist who was present when a US Marine killed an unarmed and wounded man in Falluja.

He wrote this post about it. It’s one of the most thought-provoking pieces of online journalism ever written. Indeed it ranks up there as one of the finer pieces of war journalism written in recent times (though I will confess he doesn’t have a lot of competition in that given the weak willed, wissy-washy crap that a lot of the American media generates – Fox News anyone?). Not because he espouses a definitive political or moral position about the incident. Indeed the content of his post is conflicted and he seems to struggle between his respect and friendship for the Marines he is embedded with and his moral objections to what, even in the violence of the fighting around him, feels like a wrong act to him. It is this conflict that makes the piece. This is real journalism, this is what a real war reporter does. He reports the conflict as the moral morass that it is. He is conflicted about his loyalty to his country and the serviceman he has befriended. But the violence around him, the actions of his government and those same soldiers he lives among, also disturbs him. This might be a sign that real journalism hasn’t died. I certainly hope so.