Entries for February 20, 2007

Here's the first political ad of the 2007-08 presidential cycle, from Mitt Romney, who promises "STRONG. NEW. LEADERSHIP." More to come, from Romney and many others, in the days ahead. The two videos YouTube has to follow the Romney ad are "College Saga–Episode 1" and "Citizen Hero." On the "related video" sidebar is, among others, "ROMNEY HONORS VETERANS AT STATE HOUSE CEREMONY," submitted by one "KenMehlman." That person identifies himself as Chip and gives his age as 15. "I'm not really former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. I am still a conservative Republican."

Well, you don't have to read them now. Because Michael Rubin has. Rubin is the editor of Middle East Quarterly and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Fluent in Arabic and Farsi, he spent 22 months in Iraq, most of it outside the Green Zone. In this review he gives his own magisterial take on no less than 33 books. He gives big pluses to Rick Atkinson's In the Company of Soldiers, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor's Cobra II, Bing West's No True Glory, Fouad Ajami's The Foreigner's Gift, Rory Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes, and Eric Davis's Memories of State. Minuses in varying degrees go to James Fallows's Blind into Baghdad, George Packer's The Assassins' Gate, Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City, and Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory. He also gives a less than totally positive view of Gen. David Petraeus. But Rubin's verdicts are much more nuanced than a thumbs up or thumbs down. There's lots of insight here into what has happened in Iraq. I'm waiting for Rubin's book. In the meantime, read the whole thing.