George Packer
He is the author of 10 books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (a winner of the 2013 National Book Award); Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (the winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize); and, most recently, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Before joining The Atlantic in 2018, he was a staff writer at The New Yorker for 15 years. He writes about American politics and culture and U.S. foreign policy.
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AFP / Getty Remember Zawahiri’s Victims
I have to admit that the terrorist’s end leaves me cold. Revenge is sour because it always comes too late.
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Paul Spella / The Atlantic; Getty The Rotten Core of Our Political System
In their new account of the 2020 election, two New York Times reporters reveal just how broken American democracy has become.
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Joe Raedle / Getty I Worry We’ll Soon Forget About Ukraine
Americans need to cure what ails our democracy, ridding ourselves of our incipient Russification.
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Oliver Munday / The Atlantic All Creatures Great and Small
The country the Russians came to destroy, in fighting for its life, has become one that extends solidarity and love beyond its human citizens.
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Oliver Munday / The Atlantic ‘I Know the Government Fell, but I Never Fell’
Women who served in the Afghan military are pleading for help, as Taliban fighters are hunting them down.
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Illustration by Oliver Munday. Source: Getty The Grown-Ups Are Losing It
We’ve turned schools into battlefields, and our kids are the casualties.
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Chris McGrath / Getty Ukraine Is Redefining America’s Interests
If this conflict is a new cold war, it’s one that the autocracies have been pursuing energetically and the democracies have been loath to accept.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic We Are All Realists Now
The NBA has Enes Kanter Freedom where it wants him—out of sight, out of mind, like the Uyghurs themselves.
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Andrew Quilty / Agence VU’ The Betrayal
America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan added moral injury to military failure. But a group of soldiers, veterans, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save Afghan lives and salvage some American honor.
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Danielle Del Plato Are We Doomed?
To head off the next insurrection, we’ll need to practice envisioning the worst.
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Taylor Crul / U.S. Air Force / Getty Escape From Afghanistan
Even those with a visa must endure harrowing conditions on their way to freedom.
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Wakil Kohsar / AFP / Getty We Have One Last Chance to Save Our Allies
If the United States acts now, it can still evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans whose lives are at risk for the aid they gave us.
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Paula Bronstein / Getty Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy
Our abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, and staked their lives on us is a final, gratuitous shame that we could have avoided.
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Adam Schultz / The White House The Fifth Narrative
Can the Biden administration build a more equal America?
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Illustration by Paul Spella; image by Henny Ray … 9/11 Was a Warning of What Was to Come
It was the first sign that the 21st century would be a period of shock and disaster.
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David Hume Kennerly / Getty How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered
America’s worst secretary of defense never expressed a quiver of regret.
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Joe Raedle / Getty It’s Not Too Late to Avert a Historic Shame
As the U.S. military prepares to leave Afghanistan, it’s running out of time to evacuate the Afghans who have helped the United States.
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Lucy Jones How America Fractured Into Four Parts
People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?
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Getty / The Atlantic Can Civics Save America?
Teaching civics could restore health to American democracy, or inflame our mutual antagonisms.
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Nguyen Ngoc Luong / The New York Times … Biden Can Redeem His Mistake
In 1975, he failed to see what America owed the Vietnamese who had bet their lives on American promises.
