Return of the son of Margin Notes

Apologies all around to my fans (fan?), but I have been aways from here a while--somehow American punditry soldiered on without me--first tied up with some special webbie projects at Claretian Pubs and then on paternal leave to handle the arrival of my latest contribution to U.S. Catholic tithe pool. Declan Francis Clarke arrived, in true Irish tenant farmer fashion, at home on May 8, joining his mother, myself, brothers Eoin and Aidan, and sister Ellie. We now have enough for our own punk rock band.

It's back to work for me though, so a quick brief on what may become a Margin Notes column in the near future. Here's Amnesty International detailing a somewhat unremarked upon, ongoing tragedy: the plight of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people. More than 4 million Iraqis are currently refugees or homeless inside Iraq.

Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Colin Powell told the prez that: "You break it; you buy it." It seems reasonable to assert that the U.S. has a special responsibility to the people--a great many of whom come from Iraq's Christian minority--who have been dislocated by the war and internecine violence in Iraq, yet while each month thousands flee to neighboring countries ill-equipped to receive them, the State Department has allowed fewer than 7000 Iraqi refugees into the United States. This seems a feeble effort in the face of so many traumatized by a war whose origins appear each passing Senate committee report more grounded in cold-blooded calculation and willfully delusional thinking than even the thinnest "just war-ish" argument for self defense.