Bryn Perkins of Prague's best bookshop Shakespeare & Sons recommends "War and Its Consequences" by Thomas Powers in the last-but-one New York Review of Books. Don't read it online -- get your sorry bum down to Shakes (Krymská 12) and buy a copy.

The article (OK, so I read it online) doesn't do any original reporting, but then again, it's a book review. It's quite forward-looking, addressing the question of how long will we be in Iraq, which seems pretty important given the welcome that U.S. troops have received thus far. It also goes into how the U.S. has increasingly relied on its military to carry out foreign affairs, whether stopping ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, cracking down on drugs, or distributing food in Somalia. Hence the regional CinC's (Commanders in Chief) have often become more powerful than ambassadors.

One of the sources cited in this article is Nicholas Lehmann's excellent recent New Yorker piece called "After Iraq," which does have plenty of original reporting. This is available online, too -- click here -- although you can't seem to find it anywhere on the New Yorker's web site. The best magazine in the world, probably the best magazine that ever was, has no search function for its archive. Bizarre.