Following the weekend’s anti-war protests here in Washington, I heard someone on a newscast make a strange observation: People in Washington, he said, don’t know and feel this war because we’re all so wrapped up in the politics of it. Somehow we’re insulated.

The guy went on to say that if we were in the Heartland, we would have a better idea of how people are affected by the war.  Given that he was a counter-protester, my guess is that he meant we would know how many support the war.

Whatever.

But it made me stop and think.  It’s too bad that this guy doesn’t realize that while his community in the hinterlands of Middle America might lose one or two of its own, just about every time a solider is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, it’s covered as a staff-written obituary in the Washington Post.  And some of these stories, like the one in Saturday’s paper about Army Sgt. Ashly Lynn Moyer, will rip your heart apart.

What worse, it seems like the obituaries are in the paper every day now.  It’s devastatingly sad on so many levels.