The problems of the Middle East will be with us for the foreseeable future. They are primarily the responsibility of the peoples of the area, but they also affect us closely. What is it that we have really lost in Iraq? This question does not admit of easy answers, partly because we never decided what was our essential aim there. William Polk discussed America's response to a recent coup d'état in Iraq in the December 1958 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The Lesson of Iraq | 
