A shining city in a trough

In these past few years I have read various books on the George W. Bush administration's policies concerning Iraq and Afghanistan (the latest, the dry, academic, devastating study of Afghanistan by Tim Bird and Alex Marshall). The blindness, the pride, the ideological hubris of those years is beyond belief. The decadence: if you wield great power, you have great responsibility over people's lives - if you take decisions that will mean life or death for hundreds of thousands, for millions, you are then obligated to be extremely well versed, well adviced (and intelligently critical and questioning of your advice) about the people whose fates you will affect.

The moral and intellectual corruption of that administration is mind shattering, dispiriting. It is the clearest sign yet of the end of the American empire, this decadence, this casual ignorance of that president and his advisers.