Eagle Recovered

Professor Robert Lieber at Georgetown University is the editor of "the eagle" series of books on U.S. foreign policy. The most recent volume is Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century, and previous iterations have included Eagle Resurgent? The Reagan Era in American Foreign Policy, and Eagle Entangled: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World.

I was reminded of Lieber's edited collection last night while visiting Perri Nelson's weblog, which features the most fascinating series of photographs on the near-death experience of this eagle:

It turns out two eagles fighting for the same prey collided in mid-air and the eagle above was knocked out briefly and almost drowned in the water. But he pulled himself up and shook himself off atop of this tree, and before flying off into the air, he tightened up his feathers in a pose that's quintessentially American. Here is the caption from the photographer:

The bedraggled Eagle circled me once - then lit atop a nearby fir tree. He had a six-foot wingspread and looked mighty angry. I was concerned that I might be his next target, but he was so exhausted he just stared at me. Then I wondered if he would topple to the ground. As he tried to dry his feathers, it seemed to me that this beleaguered Eagle symbolized America in its current trials ....

My half-hour wait was rewarded with this marvelous sight. He flew away, almost good as new. May America recover as well.

Magnificent. View the whole series of ten photographs, here.

See also Lieber's recent article debunking the latest theories of American decline, "Falling Upwards: Declinism, The Box Set."