I suppose if there were many American readers who were interested in the harrowing and haunting recollections of Haifa Zangana, an exiled Iraqi patriot and lifelong (since the '70s) resistance fighter, the tone and palette of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East might have taken a different form. Nonetheless, some enlightened and fortunate souls will find Zangana's Dreaming of Baghdad (The Feminist Press) and learn what should have been known well ahead of the mess the U.S. created.

And in case you are deluded enough to think that the 200-day-old 44th presidency is coming to grips with the mess that our nation created, consider this. The continuities in American foreign and military policy are striking no matter who is in the White House. The first-term Obama foreign policy now looks increasingly like the second-term Bush foreign policy. Even where change can be spotted, it regularly seems to follow in the same vein...

But so it goes.