The Economist Magazine

Public life was dominated by people who lacked moderation, sometimes probity, above all education.

Public life was dominated by people who lacked moderation, sometimes probity, above all education.

America has had an inauspicious start to the 21st century, to put it mildly. The Iraq war revealed the fragility of the "unipolar moment".

America sullied not just its moral authority, thanks to Abu Ghraib andœenhanced interrogation, but also its reputation for competence, thanks to faulty intelligence about WMD and a botched occupation.

The cost of entitlements has been rising vertiginously, and will do so even faster as the baby-boomers retire.

America still has a genius for incubating entrepreneurs and giving those entrepreneurs the wherewithal to turn bright ideas into global behemoths.

The operations have two main aims: to enlarge and merge the patches of territory controlled by NATO along the ?€œgreen zone?€ (the ribbon of irrigated land alongside the Helmand river and its tributaries) and to interdict the flow of Taliban fighters and weapons through the desert from Pakistan.

When he woke up in Lilliput, bound by a lattice of slender ligatures, to find dozens of tiny men disporting themselves on his chest, Lemuel Gulliver let out a roar "so loud that they all ran back in a fright".

When he woke up in Lilliput, bound by a lattice of slender ligatures, to find dozens of tiny men disporting themselves on his chest, Lemuel Gulliver let out a roar "so loud that they all ran back in a fright".