Left Flank

I just needed some assurance, and, despite Marty Peretz, the TNR delivered. Beyond what Franklin Foer and Leon Wieseltier said about the magazine itself, Wieseltier's comments about the need for a publication that takes its time amidst the split-second glibness of the blogosphere to examine the topics not so tidily packaged into soundbites or conclusions is revelatory. I've tried in this latest blog to stop chasing every discussion and stay truer to my own rhythm. With The Economist's steady conviction and TNR's messy dialogue, I'm very content with my subscriptions.

Also, notable is the conceit that US foreign policy can be beneficial without moralizing, as well as domestic policy following a progressive line.

Also, Michael Oren plugs his book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, and I've put it on my wish list.

From the first cannonballs fired by American warships at North African pirates to the conquest of Falluja by the Marines — from the early American explorers who probed the sources of the Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace — the United States has been dramatically involved in the Middle East. For well over two centuries, American statesmen, merchants, and missionaries, both men and women, have had a profound impact on the shaping of this crucial region. Yet their story has never been told until now. Drawing on thousands of government documents and personal letters, featuring original maps and over sixty photographs, this book reconstructs the diverse and remarkable ways in which Americans have interacted with this alluring yet often hostile land stretching from Morocco to Iran, from the Persian Gulf to the Bosporus.