August 8, 2011 issue, completed August 2, 2012

The most gripping article in this issue for me was the account of the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which was so well-written in terms of suspense and excitement that I could not put it down. It seemed to me that an elite squad on the ground was the obvious solution to how to get him - that an air raid would be useless and would probably result in loss of innocent lives, and that doing nothing would have been equally useless. The whole mission came off as something that had been supported and mandated by a leader (Obama) who saw the best of the options presented to him and then had the privilege of actually watching in real time as it was carried out. These elite squads are trained over and over for exactly this sort of mission, which begs the question, why don't we use it more? Why wasn't it used in Libya for example, and, assuming that war were to be officially declared with Syria, there too? The soldiers seemed much braver and their methods more justified than in other missions, such as air strikes. The only people who died in this mission were bad guys or their wives (not exactly innocent bystanders). The article also made me think more of the less-than-happy so-called alliance between the US and Pakistan. An article I read recently by the much-missed Christopher Hitchens spelled out the hypocrisy and duplicitousness of Pakistan's relations with the US in great detail as well. With friends like them, who needs enemies?

I also really enjoyed the discussion of biographies of Oscar Wilde, and learning more about him. And I must confess, I attempted to read the review of the two poetry books but came away from the experienced more confused than ever about how to "read" poetry. It just never seems to make any sense to me. And the article about Lucretius was also interesting. How many times was that ancient work almost lost to the whims of history? And what other great works from his era were condemned to oblivion - or, more tantalizing to imagine, lie hidden somewhere, still waiting to be rediscovered in modern times?