This issue of Catalyst focuses on challenges to the political elites, both in the United States and in its wards. In a far-ranging essay, Dina Rizk Khoury examines the calamitous results of the US invasion of Iraq. In the wake of more
the military settlement and subsequent occupation, Washington not only managed to dismantle many of the institutional anchors for daily life, it incubated a ruling elite that has only maintained its predecessors’ contempt for democratic rights and popular sovereignty. Khoury cogently lays out the political economy of this new ruling class, then provides an analysis of the subaltern forces coming together against it.