Word: americanization
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...ways we define contentment, are not immutable givens. Rather, they are the results of choices we made and habits we acquired and systems we built back in the 20th century. Different, 21st century choices are now available to us. Dysfunction and profligacy aren't inevitable, and the American tendency to magical thinking can be kept in check. The diehard opposition of powerful institutions (oil companies, agribusiness, the health-insurance industry, teachers unions and more) to fundamental change is implacable, for sure, but it isn't invincible. We can rediscover common sense and the better angels of our nature. We possess...
...manageable by Iraqi forces and with Iraq's sectarian and ethnic political divisions having become an apparently intractable feature of post-Saddam political life that no amount of U.S. cajoling appears likely to resolve, this may be as good as it gets in Iraq. And if so, why should American soldiers hang around until 2011 in a war costing America in the region of $12 billion a month and whose U.S. casualty count is nearing 4,500 dead and 30,000 wounded? (See TIME's 10 Questions for nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei...
...fact, there are a growing number of warning signs that the Iraqi government is no longer under the sway of the U.S. forces that brought it into being. Reese notes a "sudden coolness" being displayed by Iraqi commanders toward their American counterparts after June 30, the date when the Status of Forces Agreement, concluded between Baghdad and Washington last December, required that U.S. combat forces withdraw from Iraq's towns and cities. Following that date, suspects detained by U.S. soldiers were freed by Iraqis. And the Iraqi government openly disdained the recent offer by Vice President Joe Biden during...
...Declaring victory, however, requires that victory be defined. How could a U.S. pullout be finessed in such a way that the American people won't see it as a hasty retreat and a waste of lives? Reese argues, correctly, that the 2007 surge and a policy of hiring nearly 100,000 ex-Sunni insurgents have isolated al-Qaeda inspired extremists, many of them fanatics from abroad itching to martyr themselves by killing U.S. soldiers. He also says that despite the Iraqi government's corruption, nepotism and ineffectiveness, its security forces are restoring some semblance of order...
...that the 2003 U.S. invasion unleashed chaos in Iraq, as sectarian hatreds, Iranian influence and ancient feuds over land and the oil beneath it produced a storm of bloodletting. But last month, once U.S. troops began to shrink back to their giant bases, which are like sand-blown, little American cities, with pizza and burger chains, they ceased to be the dominant player in Iraq. And if the U.S. can no longer influence events in Iraq, what's the point of lingering around eating gritty pizza...