| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
There are many ways to celebrate a military victory -- you can sack a city, purge your opponents, or put on a flight suit and strut around an aircraft carrier. In August 2006, I was in Lebanon, where bridges, highways, and entire neighborhoods had been smashed to rubble in the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah. Just after the cease-fire, I got an email from a friend in Tehran: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had celebrated the "divine victory" over Israel by treating his subjects to what he claimed was the world's largest grilled kebab. The "victory kebab" was 21 long feet of juicy, meaty celebration -- a display of raw carnal politics that would have made a 19th-century New York Tammany ward boss proud.
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