Word: argumentative
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Voorhoeve acknowledged the natural advantages of writing—namely the opportunity to craft a well-formed argument in advance—and argued that the hybrid of written dialogue is most effective, citing his interviews with notable philosophers in his book...
...been - that he might have been under the influence of painkillers after last year's knee surgery, or that he and his Swedish model wife (who told police she smashed the SUV's rear window with a golf club to help extract her injured husband) were having a domestic argument heated enough to contribute to the accident - Woods' reticence, or lying, will come crashing down on his credibility much harder than it would on Joe Schmo. An FHP spokeswoman on Monday acknowledged, for example, that the agency could still request Woods' medical records from the hospital he was taken...
...First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area...
Perhaps worst of all, the “vitality vs. security” argument masks a certain, purposeful interdependence in America, especially between generations. Democracy works on the premise that the social contract spans eras. Today’s young provide some protection for those who sacrificed in the past, and today’s elderly maintain a duty of active stewardship for those who will come in the future. There are live wires between us, and to describe the American contract of caring for citizens of other generations as a mere siphoning process, as Brooks does, is to cheapen...
...make Americans safer; after all, al-Qaeda's leadership is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and recent history shows that terrorists can plot and strike in Moscow and Madrid and Mumbai regardless of whether or not they have a safe haven in Afghanistan. The second problem with the national-security argument is that it is rhetorically defensive - it defines the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in terms of what American troops are fighting against, but provides little sense of what the country is fighting for. (See what to watch for in Obama's Afghanistan speech...