Sublime

Zarqawi’s lieutenants. I come to know them better than I know most of my friends—to understand what still haunts them about their childhood, how a particular string of numbers holds emotional significance for them, the different reasons each gets up every day to fight.

The fear injects my thoughts with venom. Beltway BS. No wonder we’re losing this war. Bunch of risk-averse desk jockeys calling the shots. The taxi jerks to a stop at an intersection, and I look up. The plastic back of the driver’s seat is covered in graffiti. Most of it is in Urdu. Some is in Arabic. One creased sticker off to the side is in Engli

We’re under constant surveillance, pitted against one another, tested well beyond our limits. Sleazy instructors grope the female students in the name of preparing them for harassment in the field. Aging instructors shout at any student who uses the Internet or, God forbid, a cell phone. Division chiefs from Langley go undercover as instructors to

According to the precept of badal, any injustice—no matter how slight—must be avenged. If a man suffers even the relatively minor insult of a personal taunt, for example, the insulted party must shed the taunter’s blood; if the taunter flees before justice can be carried out, the blood of his closest male relative must be shed in his stead. Endeavo

To spice things up, surveillants work in teams of seven or eight, switching off with one another each time we turn left or right, so that no single surveillant is exposed more than a handful of times over the entire route. It’s a cat-and-mouse labyrinth chase through city streets, and the only way to win is to design a route with enough changes of

AFTER QIBYA, CONDEMNATIONS POURED in from across the globe, including from the American Jewish community.13 But Ben-Gurion was unmoved. When the prime minister called Sharon in to discuss the details of the notorious night, Sharon recalled Ben-Gurion’s reaction: “It doesn’t make any real difference what will be said about Qibya around the world. Th

Howard K. Smith, who fled Nazi Germany on the last train from Berlin before Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941; James Cameron, whose iconic 1946 report from the Bikini atom tests was perhaps the most literary and philosophical article ever published in a newspaper.