Beneath this half-completed section of highway overpass on the dusty outskirts of Dakar, Moussa spreads his arms widely and raises them to the concrete slab above his head

Before we use Thomas Ricks’s The Gamble to revisit the now largely forgotten American escalation in Iraq, a few words on the US occupation there between 2003 and 2006 might be helpful, and Ricks himself provides them.

In Venezuela, the revolution is televised. Each Sunday, Hugo Chavez treats his country to a one-man variety show—Alo Presidente!—that would make Ed Sullivan blush.

As the boondoggle in Baghdad grinds into another year of disaster, Americans have lost interest in exploring the vast warehouses of Bush administration deceit.

While much of the world’s attention in late 2001 was focused on the nascent War on Terror unfolding in Afghanistan, the Southern Cone of South America witnessed the financial disintegration of a regional juggernaut.

Given the degree to which Iraq and Afghanistan have disintegrated into little more than venues for stomach-turning violence, corporate plunder, and doomed efforts at state-building, it’s surprising to find someone outside the West Wing still clinging to the false promise of American Empire. And yet here he stands: Robert Kaplan, beltway darling and correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, arguing in his new book for a greater application of American military involvement overseas.