Marc Lynch,"Biddle's Best Case," Abu Aardvark, 16 November, reports on a presentation by Stephen Biddle,"a first-rate military strategist who has been working with General Petraeus, about military progress in Iraq." According to Biddle,

... if everything goes right and if the US continues to"hit the lottery" with the spread of local ceasefires and none of a dozen different spoilers happens, then a patchwork of local ceasefires between heavily armed, mistrustful communities could possibly hold if and only if the US keeps 80,000-100,000 troops in Iraq for the next twenty to thirty years.

If that's what it takes, why not just declare Iraq a colony of the United States and end all pretense? After all, it was counted a British colony under the League of Nations mandate and British troops only occupied Iraq for thirty years.

Brycchan Carey's Website is a rich source of links to 18th and 19th century sources in British abolitionism, including the Afro-British abolitionists. Hat tip.

Myron Magnet,"Monticello's Shadows," City Journal, Autumn, visits Thomas Jefferson's home near Charlottesville to find what it tells us about his"mind and heart." Hat tip.

James Wood,"How War and Peace Works," New Yorker, 26 November, reviews Richard Pevear's and Larissa Volokhonsky's new translation of Tolstoy's major novel.

Andrew Motion,"Waging War on the Sublime," Guardian, 17 November, reviews A. David Moody's Ezra Pound: Poet. Vol 1: The Young Genius 1885-1920. Hat tip.

Drawing on recent work on the history of photographs, Louis Masur's"How the Truth gets Framed by the Camera," CHE, 23 November, argues that they require interpretation.

Gregg Herken,"Arms and the Men," Boston Globe, 18 November, reviews Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race.

Nicholas Guyatt,"Blackberry Apocalypse," LRB, 15 November, reviews Chris Hedges's American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Andrew Romano,"Making the Case for Hillary Clinton," Stumper, 16 November, interviews Cliopatria's contributing editor, Sean Wilentz. In"Too Good for Politics," Slate, 16 November, David Greenberg draws a more direct analogy between Adlai Stevenson's"mugwump" politics and Barak Obama's. Matt Yglesias,"Do We Want the next JFK?" 18 November; and Scott Lemieux,"Defending Clinton through JFK Worship," 19 November, reject the analogy.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/20/2007

It has the virtue of clarity. I do understand that clarity isn't a prime value in some circles.

Manan Ahmed - 11/20/2007

Would that accomplish some political or bureaucratic goal? It is what it is. I don't think it matters, really. America is, and always has been, an empire, despite all the hand-wringing on the subject and, as an empire, it has colonies.