have for it had ceased to correspond. We in the United States undoubtedly now need such a ceremony. We certainly need a new term for our own “democracy” before we’re so quick to hold it up as the paragon for others to match.
We also need to rethink our language when it comes to the U.S. military undertaking “nation building” in distant lands—as if countries could be constructed to our taste in just the way that KBR or DynCorp construct military bases in them. We need to stop our commanders from bragging about our skill in creating a “government in a box” for our Afghan friends, when our government at home is largely boxed-in and strikingly dysfunctional.
So, no, I have never been to Iraq, but yes, I’ve been here for years, watching, and I can see, among other things, that the American mirror on the wall, which shows us ourselves in such beautiful, Disneyesque detail, has a few cracks in it. It looks fragile. I’d think twice about sending it abroad too often.
A Note on the Text
Thirty-two of the thirty-three pieces that make up this book were written between April 2010 and mid-2011, thirty-one for my website TomDispatch.com. Barely more than a year on the calendar, but given our exploding world, it seemed like years, not months. Has there ever been a time—not in my life anyway—when so much seemed to happen all at once? So consider this my small record of a period when, for all the fear-suffused attempts to lock America down, the world came pouring in anyway. It’s important, however, to note that the essays included here are not the originals I wrote. They were edited, trimmed or cut down, modestly updated, and woven into book form. The tell-tale signs of the immediate moment—all the
Though this book generally moves chronologically within its chapters, for the sake of whatever flow it may have, I decided not to include in the text the original date on which each piece was posted. For the record, and in case readers should wish to check out any of the essays in their original form at TomDispatch.com, below is a list of them with the dates they were posted (and their original titles, if changed). Note that the second piece in the book was written for, and published in a slightly different form by,
Acknowledgments
No man is an island. If that sentence applies to anything these days, it has to be to book writing in particular and to this book specifically. The lone (and lonely) author? Not me, at least. In fact, this book wouldn’t exist without the ministrations of Anthony Arnove, my friend and editor at Haymarket Books. Among his many other talents he’s a wizard on the page, and it was he who wove my TomDispatch essays of the past year into the book I now truly believe this is. I owe him thanks galore. He, in turn, is no island, being surrounded by the hardworking crowd from Haymarket Books, including eagle-eyed copy editor/proofreader J. Gabriel Boylan, and especially that key trio of Rachel Cohen, Julie Fain, and Dao X. Tran. They have my thanks as well.
When it comes to TomDispatch.com, it’s land all the way to the horizon. I hardly know where to begin. How could I do it without my many friends who keep TomDispatch alive and kicking with their remarkable pieces, or the Nation Institute, which supports the site (special thanks to Taya Kitman), or Patrick Lannan and Lannan Foundation, who have made all the difference, or Joe Duax, Andy Kroll, Christopher Holmes, and Timothy MacBain, who ensure that the site remains always above the rising waters, or my pal Nick Turse, who hears from me far too often and keeps me sane in life and honest on the page. And speaking about a world of islands so close that they’re just a raft’s ride across any channel, I would never want to forget all the wonderful people at other websites—too many to name—who repost TomDispatch pieces and whom I e-meet or even, on occasion, see face to face.
And then, of course, there are those who matter most of all: my wife, Nancy Garrity, and my children, Maggie and Will. They make life worth living.
And oh, yes, there’s the world itself that has to be acknowledged somehow. But can I really thank it for offering up enough folly and misery to keep TomDispatch rolling along or for being, in TomDispatch terms, the gift that just keeps on giving? Perhaps not. So let me just stick to the people who matter most to me. A deep bow of thanks to all of you.
