…and you might want to help him get there:

Will [Libya] disintegrate into a failed militia state like Somalia with terrorists controlling some of the fragments? Will it lapse again into authoritarian or even totalitarian rule, the only kind of government it has ever known? Or will it beat the odds and cohere into something that looks like democracy?

Nobody knows, but I’m going over there to take a look and report on what’s happening now. My first-person narrative dispatches from Middle Eastern countries at war and in the throes of revolution garnered me three blogging awards and a book prize, but I still work as a freelancer. I don’t have a salary, let alone a travel expense account.

That’s where you come in. Fund my next trip””to Libya near the end of this year””so I can produce a brand-new batch of first-person narrative dispatches. You can follow along as I publish them on my blog. And at the end of the project, I’ll publish all my material as a dispatch pack””including full-color photographs””that you can read on your iPad, your Kindle, or any other tablet or reading device. And if you don’t have a tablet or reading device, you can just read them on your computer. Generous donors will receive public thank-yous from me, on my blog and in the dispatch pack when it’s published.

I’m not asking you for donations. I’m asking you to participate and will give you something back in return. Let’s go to Libya.