As the grim realities of “the troubled European Union and the darkening Arab Spring” become undeniable, Walter Laqueur, one of the deans of foreign policy commentary in America, explores the ways in which wishful thinking and partial reporting of these events, disguised as analysis, has denied and distorted reality—leaving the public unprepared for unpleasant outcomes and policymakers ill equipped to affect them. Sadly, it’s not a new phenomenon, as Laqueur notes. Nor are the ideological themes that underpin the wishful thinking particularly novel. In some sense, Americans have always been innocents abroad. And because none of us are immune to self-delusion, in our rush to justify our own worldviews—and the ideological and political
