Bali has always been one of those places I've had on my list as somewhere I'd really like to visit some time - mostly for the music, the Gamalan orchestras and the dancing. And I've known people who have gone there.

So in a way the atrocity there is as close for me as what happened on Septemnber 11. I could imagine being a tourist in Bali more easily than being in an office in the World Trade Centre, for example. At the same time it didn't unfold live on television, and involve the images of planes flying overhead past urban buildings which are a daily part of the landscape of my life, which distances it in a way.

The thing that stands out, apart from the horror, is how irrelevant this makes the obsession with Iraq on the part of our rulers. Here's a bit from today's editorial in the paper I read:

Even the Bush administration will find it a stretch to blame Bali on Saddam Hussein. More worryingly still, by inflaming opinion in the Muslim world and beyond, war may disrupt anti-terror efforts, weaken or destroy the international coalition and act as a persuasive recruiting sergeant for al-Qaida, raising the prospect of yet more murders of innocents.

If Bali tells us anything, it is that the defeat of stateless, international terrorism is the most pressing security issue of the day. It is far too important to be misdirected or diverted for dubious, divisive reasons by one country against another.

(And I think the trolling point made by the "GUEST" who started this, implicitly implying that Americans don't care about deaths in other countries should be ignored.)