Facing forward

I agree with the CFR remark that all these year-end retrospectives about what happened in the last twelve months "amount to little more than a tepid rehashing of old news (AP)."
Rather than looking backward, they are looking at the year to come withe a preliminary taxonomy of five categories.

1. Bullets and Ballots in Iraq: James Lindsay on Bush and Iraq Richard Haass on tolerable outcomes Politics inside Iraq Sunnis and the insurgency Training Iraqi forces A vanishing “coalition” Torture and laws of war

2. The Wrath of Mother Nature: Tsunami reconstruction David Victor on the “climate change stalemate” The pandemic threat Homeland security and Katrina

3. Mispent Energy: Global oil trends Mideast energy outlook Why prices are high China-U.S. energy competition Energy Information Agency 2006 forecast

4. Checkered China: Is China a military threat? China’s angry peasants Elizabeth Economy on the lessons of Harbin U.S.-China ties Censoring the internet

5. Europe’s Rude Awakening: Max Boot on France’s Muslim unrest Islam in Europe Germany’s muddled vote The EU’s federal impasse Joseph Joffe on Europe’s failed “counter-balance”

Okay, readers.
That should keep you busy for an hour or two.

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Also, by way of a festive beginning of the year, here is a link to the video that Michael Yon passed on last week. Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man plays to a montage of images from the last elections in Iraq.

No matter how anyone feels about the outcome, it is clearly a historic event in our time. Whatever happens in the future, the 2005 elections in Iraq will always be recalled as more than a footnote.