A fascinating article by the inimitable Robert Kaplan, on how the war in Iraq is like fighting the Apaches, may be read here. And it features this really good point: “The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging global civilization that, the more it matures–with its own mass media and governing structures–the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it.”