Whoa, let's hold those surging horses in check a moment. Violence has lessened in Iraq. That seems to be a fact of the last two months – and, for the Iraqis, a positive one, obviously. What to make of the "good news" from Iraq is another matter entirely, one made...
Globalization, what a concept. You can get a burger prepared your way practically anywhere in the world. The Nike Swoosh appears at elite athletic venues across the United States and on the skinny frames of T-shirted children playing in the streets of Calcutta. For...
Acts matter. Here's how Dahr Jamail, a young mountain guide and volunteer rescue ranger in Alaska (who did freelance writing in the "off-season") describes his rash decision, back in 2003, to cover George W. Bush's Iraq War in person: "I decided that the one thing I...
Over the last seven years, it's often been said that George W. Bush exists in a bubble. When it comes to the cast of characters in his administration – and the Washington Consensus generally – it turns out he isn't alone. The other night I watched Harvard...
Before I met Jonathan Schell, I already knew him in the best way possible: on the page. Even in his days as a neophyte journalist in Vietnam, he committed a writer's greatest act of generosity. First in the pages of The New Yorker, and then in his books, he took...
Think for a moment of what has happened in Iraq since the Bush administration's shock-and-awe invasion in March 2003. There are, by now, perhaps a million dead Iraqis, give or take a few hundred thousand. If a typical wounded-to-dead ratio of 3:1 holds, then you're...
You know there's trouble ahead when Iraq, in its present state, is the good news story for Bush administration policy. While various civilian and military officials from the president on down have been talking up "success" in Iraq and beating the rhetorical war drums...
Advice to a Young Builder in Tough Times I know. Times are tough. Here, in the United States, the bottom's threatening to blow out of the housing market. Here, construction companies are laying off employees, and builders are wondering where their next jobs are likely...
History… phooey! Or, more mildly, Americans traditionally aren't much interested in it and the media largely don't have time for it either. For one thing, the past is often just so inconvenient. On Monday, for instance, there was a front-page piece in the New...
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