Blows against the Empire

In The Times, from Gerard Baker: It sounded so good to start with. But where did it all go wrong, George? where Baker asks W's rhetorical question: How’m I doin’? And concludes:

It is hard for me to recall a time when the world was such a scary place. No one should rejoice at America’s weakness. The world is scarier still because of it.

Kevin Drum: The incredible shrinking bomb plot.

Digby reminds us, once again, of the cost of all of this. Many more relevant posts on Hullaballoo recently.

And then there's the Spiegel interview with Jimmy Carter I should have linked to yesterday. After further reading, too good to miss. Or if you don't want to read it, just read the excerpts on Sheila Lennon's blog. Carter also allows for some hope:

...historically, our country has had the capability of self-correcting our own mistakes. This applied to slavery in 1865, it applied to legal racial segregation a hundred years later or so. It applied to the Joe McCarthy era when anti-communism was in a fearsome phase in the country like terrorism now. So we have an ability to correct ourselves and I believe that nowadays there is a self-correction taking place. In my opinion the election results in Connecticut... were an indication that Americans realized very clearly that we made a mistake in going into Iraq and staying there too long.

Lots of bloggers are commenting about the announcement that George W. Bush took Camus' The Stranger along to his ranch for summer reading. In The American Prospect, Julian Sanchez imagine's W's Summer Reading Journal:

I'm having some second thoughts about switching from "stay the course" to this "adapt and win" talking point. See, I was out clearing brush and got to thinking: The brush -- it's just going to keep on growing back. Can't really win the fight; it's futile. Absurd, you might say. Yet isn't there a kind of nobility in facing up to this and persevering, without illusions or false hope? Now I see Baghdad kind of the same.