Michael Ignatieff had a brilliant essay in Sunday's New York Times magazine
I can't tell whether that's your judgment, Bill, or someone else from whom you "stole" the text, "Intel Dump?"
But whatever . . ., I agree with the judgment. Save for the fact that Ignatieff is extraordinarily difficult to pin down.
If, for instance, you reread the several paragraphs you post here, we could all differ, and differ greatly, as to which are the most important. For my money, once the issue is framed as Ignatieff does, the most important sentences are these:
The question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions. If we can't, any victories we gain in the war on terror will be Pyrrhic ones.
And that's, for all Ignatieff's terrific prose, the genuinely tough nut. |
