This has been a very tough decade for the United States.

Getting to global zero will be arduous, but it can be done.

Aziz had just returned from another court hearing inside Baghdad's green zone, where the ghosts of Iraq under Saddam are being exorcised in a series of painstaking trials.

In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words.

Of course, this can go wrong, as demonstrated by the sadomasochism of the recent debt-ceiling wrangle.