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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

Thought for the day

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Dec 12 2008, 2:58 PM ET Comment

Moments ago, I finished Bacevich's The Limits of Power. It's a great book that's left me wondering what I think about a lot of things--Obama, oil policy and humanitarian intervention. I don't know how to say this, but my instincts now tell me that it's a lot easier to condemn folks for not intervening in Rwanda, then to grapple with having to put a country back together again. I am not saying it was right to not intervene. Yet. I'm not prepared to go there. But if I'm going to do the thought experiment with the herioic rescue and Holocaust averted, I want to follow it all the way through.

Most importantly though, this book just made me buy another book--Niebuhr's The Irony of American History. I feel ignorant admitting this, but I wasn't up on Niebuhr until a couple years ago. That's what the fuck I get for dropping out.

UPDATE:
Here's a link to a good Bill Moyers interview with Bacevich.


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