There is a lot of crime in the world, too much — but sometimes misfortune hits close to home and needs to be highlighted.
There is a bizarre coincidence in the resort area of the Algarve Coast in Portugal in which a 3-year old girl and 70-year old man have disappeared without a trace — in two separate incidents. One might suggest that sort of thing happens every day in large cities — and of course, I’m fully aware that Iraqis are experiencing human trauma on the level of 9/11 about every 8 days.
3-year old Madeleine McCann was kidnapped from her apartment while her parents dined at a restaurant next door, and Karl Kleine-Brockhoff disappeared while hiking four miles from his rented villa to a small village to meet his wife and friends.
Kleine-Brockhoff is the father of Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a well known international journalist who was Washington Bureau Chief of Die Zeit and has been a blogger on occasion for the Washington Post. He begins a new position with the German Marshall Fund in Washington next Monday.
I highlight these cases because it’s hard to lose friends, family members, or even just good people we don’t know — whether in Iraq or in our own neighborhoods.
— Steve Clemons
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