I will be heading east in a couple of weeks to nose around Moldova and Ukraine. I would love to meet people who live in Chisinau, Odessa, or the curiously skinny republic of Transnistria (actual slogan: "Compared to Moldova, this is like the Riviera"). If you live there, or have contacts there, please drop me a line!…

"The big wild card — a critical mass of people who share our aspirations inside these countries, rising up and leading the fight, which is ultimately what tipped Iraq for the better — I don’t see. As such, I fear we are sliding into commitments in Afghanistan and Pakistan without a real national debate about the ends or the means or the exits. That is a recipe for trouble."

At the start of March, an economist named Robert Barro gazed deep into historical data and announced in a Wall Street Journal article that we had a 20% chance of falling into economic depression.

I found myself mesmerized by this prediction, a shining diamond of unfalsifiability. In Aug…