In 1920, the League of Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of secret deals made during World War I. Just six months into British rule, Iraqi opposition was growing. After the unrest deteriorated into three months of death and anarchy, the British plucked an Arab nationalist fighter from exile in the United Kingdom and installed him as king. The monarchy lasted until 1958, when a military coup turned Iraq into a republic. To many Iraqis, today’s U.S. occupation reads like an old play with modern characters: America as the new Britain, grenade-lobbing insurgents as the new opposition, and Ahmad Chalabi and other former exiles on the Governing Council as the new kings.
Earlier here.
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Wasn’t outer space the dopey diversion of the well-behaved during the Cold War? Weren’t moon shots the 60s’ and 70s’ bread and circuses for a country worn out by a pointless war abroad and social insurrections at home? Replay. The country is again being worn out by a pointless war abroad and split by political and economic divisions at home. Insurrections can’t be far behind. China is looking to put a man on The moon. What better excuse for a president — whose deficits in dollars and sense already reach well past the moon — than to aim for Mars?
We spun around, ready to fire. I saw a boy of about 15, wearing nothing but ragged black shorts, crouching and firing an AK-47 at the troops behind us. I could see two others, heads just above the top of the rice, firing as well … One thing was clear: these were local boys. They had the advantage of knowing every ditch and dyke, every tree and blade of rice and piece of cover, like it was their own backyard. Because it was their backyard … Later that afternoon, I turned to the radio man, a wiry African American kid who looked too thin to be lugging his 75lb radio, and asked: “By any chance, do you ever feel like the redcoats?” Without missing a beat he said, in a drawl: “I’ve been thinking that … all … day.”
