Under the headline "The End of the End of History," (but behind a paywall, I think) TNR carries a long piece, maybe an excerpt, from a new book by Robert Kagan. The last line:

The world's democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and advance their principles in a world in which these are, once again, powerfully contested.

It's unfair to judge a book by an article, but what strikes me about the latter is how it strains to renovate a scenario for major embattlement by conjuring a proper target for unilateralist belligerence. The curtain rises on... the autocracies of the in- or resurgent great powers, Russia and China.

I can't help but wonder whether what we're getting here is a polished-off brief for the battered neocon project. Reader, don't think that you have to retire your Martian belligerence just because the Iraq war was a boundless disaster. Don't despair. The Cold War will be back.

Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss is raw, plausible, shocking, and otherwise rich in aesthetic virtue, not the least of which is the way it faces squarely the impossible situation American troops are faced with in Iraq. Perhaps because the script is a collaboration between Peirce, said to be anti-war, and Mark Richard, said to be pro-war, the film puts its central character, Brandon King (Ryan Philippe) in an impossible situation. Called up for a second tour in Iraq when he was sure he was entitled to an exit pass, squad leader King faces nothing but bad choices. Will he skip out and betray his buddies? Will he go back and betray his mind? Call this an extended metaphor for the whole misbegotten war--there aren't going to be any happy endings. In every wrenching way, the war is a trap. Don't believe the critics who tell you the film is ragged and therefore flawed. All the characters have human dimension. The raggedness is the raggedness of the Odyssey. By the end, you can hardly breathe.