Your Weekend Read: Stabbed in the Back

Here's an article that may well take you the whole weekend to read. It's from the June Harper's, and it quite well explains the times we're living in. It's called Stabbed in the Back, and in it you can learn German, history, and sociology all at once. The article is long, but the payoff is great:

Who could possibly believe in a plot to lose this war? No one cares that much about it. We have, instead, reached a crossroads where the overwhelming right-wing desire to dissolve much of the old social compact that held together the modern nation-state is irreconcilably at odds with any attempt to conduct such a grand, heroic experiment as implanting democracy in the Middle East. Without mass participation, Iraq cannot be passed off as an heroic endeavor, no matter how much Mr. Bush’s rhetoric tries to make it one, and without a hero there can be no great betrayer, no skulking villain.

Go read the whole thing.