While looking through our classes' first posts on the Iraq War, one thing I noticed they all seemed to have in common was that there was some sense of confusion, whether it was over why we were fighting a war there in the first place, or over what we should do now. I feel like it's difficult to take a stance on this war, because the fact of the matter is we don't know exactly what is going on. There are always multiple sides to every story, and the stories we often hear of the war are often filtered through the teller's own bias. Thus we end up with conflicting view points of the same events, and we are unsure of which side to believe. Not to mention the fact that there seems to be no middle ground. Either you are completely against the war or you are for it, and claiming otherwise because your opinion differs from issue to issue generally causes you to be regarded as apathetic.

I noticed a similar sort of confusion in the actions of the narrator of Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville. The narrator of the story is perplexed by Bartleby, and feels an innate desire to help him while simultaneously loathes him. It is ironic that the narrator feels both pity for Bartleby and anger at how pitiful Bartleby is. When the narrator initially discovers Bartleby's awkward character flaws, he contemplates just not getting involved and firing Bartleby, but eventually he decides that this course of action is too harsh and tries to help him. I am sure many readers felt that the narrator was being foolish getting involved in a problem he could not do much to fix, but others probably felt that it was still the right thing to do. I believe that this is how many felt about taking military action in Iraq in the first place. Should we just leave these people to their fate, or do we risk causing more damage by sticking our noses where it probably doesn't belong? In the end, you could say our conscience got the better of us, just as it did the narrator.