From what we'd read when we wrote about her almost three years ago, Ruzicka sounded like a typical Angry Left prima donna. But an August 2004 report in the Washington Post persuades us that either we judged her too harshly or she matured in the last few years of her life . . .

. . . The AP quotes Medea Benjamin, head of the far-left Global Exchange: "It's a terrible tragedy and a tragic irony that somebody who devoted her life to helping the victims of war would herself become a victim of war." This, of course, is untrue. That someone who chose to spend time in a war zone ended up the victim of war is not ironic in the least.

What is perhaps ironic, though not tragic, is that the cause Ruzicka embraced for antiwar reasons is probably helpful to the American war effort. Compensating the innocent victims of war helps to prove that America is in Afghanistan and Iraq as a liberator, not a conqueror. By contrast, Marla Ruzicka's survivors will never receive so much as a word of regret from the anti-American terrorists who struck her down.