We'd call it the end of an era, but if it weren't for Henry the Intern, would you have even known that Harold Evans wasn't just Tina Brown's love slave but, in fact, a weekly radio host? For the past 13 weeks, BBC Radio 4 has hosted Evans's weekly "Letter from America," in which he rambles about the current American sentiment on current affairs (and usually those affairs least relevant to the issue of the week). For his final broadcast, Evans finally tackles the elephant in the room and talks of Iraq, if only in terms of its "elegant preamble." After the jump, Henry the Intern reports.

Sir Harold Evans signed off from his post as the resident historian of BBC Radio 4 with an analysis of the war in Iraq from the perspective of American patriotism. Harold's final commentary began oddly enough — "I met a baby-faced youth I'd never seen before at a casual dinner in New York..." — but ended with the same optimistic melancholy expected by fans of "Seventh Heaven." From sea to shining sea, indeed.

Harold was surprised that Noah Feldman, a "young man" with a "quiet voice," had anything substantial to offer about the situation in Iraq. I was surprised that Harold, a connoisseur of highbrow news and history, could miss all of the C-SPAN and cable news appearances logged by the hipster-looking NYU professor and author turned senior adviser to the coalition authority in Iraq. Feldman, a scholar of constitutional law who speaks fluent Arabic, is a modern-day George Washington for the spread of democracy.

Feldman has been a believer since landing in Iraq in 2003. According to Harold, he "envisioned an Islamic democracy" based on "a genuinely representative government" with "regular elections and equality for all citizens, including women, Muslims and non-Muslims."

But Americans are losing hope. Harold said, "What hope is there, they ask, for building democracy in a nation so shell-shocked, so riven by conflicts of religion, region and class, so racked by insurrection and foreign intrigue, so fractured and turbulent it cannot even reach a consensus on what kind of country it is?" (By the way, that's just the kind of never-ending question that works fantastically on radio.)

Harold found an answer in "a stunning new piece of scholarship" by the liberal Princeton professor Sean Wilentz. Wilentz's "big new history" tome, The Rise of American Democracy, "confronts Americans with the thought that —compared to generations before them fighting for liberty and equality— they are wimps." Now that's harsh.

"Occupiers, even as well-meaning as Bush and Blair, are never popular for long," said Harold. "But Feldman argues that leaving Iraq before a legitimately elected government can rule will be as great a betrayal as the British evacuation [of the country] in the 1920s." So much for simplification.

Anyway, as always, Harold found the silver lining: it's "downright moving" to read the Iraqi constitution's "eloquent preamble," which honors "the darkness of the ravage of the holy cities and the south...the flames of grief of the mass graves...the racial oppression...the assassinations..." and so on.

And with that, Harold concluded his 13-week history course by quoting our own founding fathers: "Perhaps in time those words will come to have the same romance for Iraqis as the following words do for Americans, 'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility. . . secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'"

Godspeed, Harold. Thanks for your wisdom and your accent. Now you can turn your attention to Tina's upcoming birthday.