Robert Kagan, in Foreign Affairs:

Those who today proclaim that the United States is in decline often imagine a past in which the world danced to an Olympian America's tune. That is an illusion. Nostalgia swells for the wondrous U.S.-dominated era after World War II. But although the United States succeeded in Europe then, it suffered disastrous setbacks elsewhere. The "loss" of China to communism, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Soviet Union's testing of a hydrogen bomb, the stirrings of postcolonial nationalism in Indochina -- each was a strategic calamity of immense scope, and was understood to be such at the time. Each critically shaped the remainder of the twentieth century, and not for the better. And each proved utterly beyond the United States' power to control or even to manage successfully. Not a single event in the last decade can match any one of those events in terms of its enormity as a setback to the United States' position in the world.

The September 12 Paradigm

Lee Sandlin:

I once saw a vintage newspaper from the Civil War announcing the result of the Battle of Gettysburg. "TREMENDOUS VICTORY IN PENNSYLVANIA" was the headline. In smaller type was this subhead: "Reverent Gratitude of the People." Reverent gratitude -- there's a sentiment we don't see much of these days.

From the archive:

The Civil War dead are still among us—long after their beautifully dressed widows have passed away—and the problem is how to get them buried. The acceptable thing to say now, as it was then, is that the soldiers, and their sacrifice, are what remain to inspire us. But it’s the corpses that haunt us, not the soldiers, as they haunted us then, and no amount of black crêpe can cover them over.

The Iraq War introduced entirely new kinds of cruelty to the world, so it’s strange how many of my memories are of kindness.

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Losing the War

This summer, the photographer Platon took pictures of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He followed them on their journey through training and deployment, after demobilization and in hospitals, to compile a portrait of the dedication of the armed services today.

This is the photo-essay that Powell mentioned in his endorsement message.

From the archive:

You are about to be punched in the stomach. That sinking feeling is your heart wondering which direction the swing is going to come from.

Service

From the October issue of The Walrus:

BEIRUT — The workday is over, and I’m standing in the driveway beneath my worn concrete apartment building, digging in my pocket for keys. A headlight flashes from the street to my left — a moped pulling up to the entrance. The driver, who sports a black balaclava and an AK-47, drops off his hefty, similarly attired passenger. Slipping a key into the lock of the gate to the lobby, I am acutely aware of this faceless gunman waiting impatiently behind me.

I pause. Shouldn’t he produce his own keys to get in? I opt for polite — he does, after all, have his hands full — and give the bars an extra push, allowing him to follow through behind me. He returns the courtesy by stretching the eyehole of his mask down and hooking it under his chin, revealing the clean-shaven young neighbour I met on the elevator one afternoon last month. He says hi, I say hi, and we both take a step toward our reflections in the mirrored wall of the small, Italian-made lift.

“Big day today, huh?” I ask as we start to climb.

“Yeah,” he replies blankly, rearranging his grip so as to hold both the AK and his extra banana clip more comfortably.

Neighbourhood Watch

The solution for people who have spent a long time in Afghanistan was a different one: to work with the Taliban and somehow to uncouple the Afghan fighters from al-Qaeda. Seven years of killing later, it feels a bit too late to try that now. So, western policy seems glued to fighting a war that many people in the know are now saying the west is never going to win: "We're here because we're here because we're here . . ."

The killing fields

Despite their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan.

Both are wrong.

History cries out to them, but they are not listening.

From the archive:

Historian David McCullough has said that all teachers of history should be trained storytellers. But there are some stories that Americans would rather not hear.

The reality of war in Afghanistan

A George Packer roundup.

As for Palin, the incarnation of red-meat, know-nothing Christian nationalism, she turns out to be McCain’s single biggest mistake.

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied.

Roger Catt, the retired Wisconsin farmer who told me that “McCain is more of the same, and Obama is the end of life as we know it,” will be voting for the end of life as we know it.

Wading for a few minutes through the sewage of these Web sites reminds me uncannily of the time I’ve spent having political discussions in certain living rooms and coffee shops in Baghdad. The mental atmosphere is exactly the same—the wild fantasies presented as obvious truth, the patterns seen by those few with the courage and wisdom to see, the amused pity for anyone weak-minded enough to be skeptical, the logic that turns counter-evidence into evidence and every random piece of information into a worldwide conspiracy. Above all, the seething resentment, the mix of arrogance and impotent rage that burns at the heart of the paranoid style in politics.

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list those deserving thanks know who they are.

Andrew Lahde bows out in style

Slavoj Žižek, in 1999:

At a recent meeting of the leaders of the Western powers dedicated to the ‘Third Way’, the Italian Prime Minister Massimo d’Alema said that one should not be afraid of the word ‘socialism’. Clinton and, following him, Blair and Schroeder, are supposed to have burst out laughing. This says much about the Third Way, which is ‘problematic’ not least because it exposes the absence of a Second Way. The idea of a Third Way emerged at the very moment when, at least in the West, all other alternatives, from old-style conservativism to radical social democracy, crumbled in the face of the triumphant onslaught of global capitalism and its notion of liberal democracy. The true message of the notion of the Third Way is that there is no Second Way, no alternative to global capitalism, so that, in a kind of mocking pseudo-Hegelian negation of negation, the Third Way brings us back to the first and only way. Global capitalism with a human face.

From the archive, Paul Graham:

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism

Good evening. This is your Captain.
We are about to attempt a crash landing.
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their
upright, locked position.
Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees.
Your Captain says: Put your head in your hands.
Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh.
This is your Captain--and we are going down.
We are all going down, together.
And I said: Uh oh. This is gonna be some day.
Standby. This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.

Also:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

From the Air