Word: argumentativeness
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When History Professor Niall C. D. Ferguson begins his lecture at 10:07 a.m., he abandons the podium, choosing instead to pace in a slow, deliberate loop around the lectern. He speaks with the kind of proper British accent that makes Anglophiles swoon. As he makes an argument about the French Revolution, his throat wraps around certain words with a silky aggression that he punctuates by cocking an eyebrow or gesturing with his left hand, index finger and thumb closed into an “o” around a stub of chalk. His words are actually improvised. His paper...
...Senate subcommittee from Republicans who are skeptical over the Geneva talks, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg suggested on Tuesday, according to CNN, that "one reason for the Obama Administration's engagement toward Iran was to secure international support for sanctions if Iran continued to defy international demands." The argument works if Iran stonewalls; but if it offers counterproposals deemed reasonable by China, Russia and some Europeans, winning support for further sanctions would become even harder. And that's a game the Iranians may be ready to play, by refusing to give up uranium enrichment but at the same time...
...These flawed assumptions underlie the misguided argument that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Some voices have begun to advocate a much smaller mission in Afghanistan, fewer troops and a decapitation strategy aimed at militant leaders carried out by special forces and drone attacks. Superficially, this sounds reasonable. But it has a back-to-the-future flavor because it is more or less the exact same policy that the Bush Administration followed in the first years of the occupation: a light footprint of several thousand U.S. soldiers who were confined to counterterrorism missions. That approach helped foster the resurgence...
Hawks on Afghan policy - those who favor defeating al-Qaeda through a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy involving up to 40,000 more U.S. troops - have divined a politically clever line of argument...
...strongest argument for this middle course is that the all-out alternative simply defies realities. The all-out strategy calls for an additional 40,000 or so troops, most of whom wont be deployed in the field in less than a year; they would thus do little to protect against the near-term dangers that General Stanley McChrystal has warned of. Perhaps most fundamental, the middle way avoids the quicksand on which the counterinsurgency strategy is built: the absolute need for nation-building. Counterinsurgency strategy requires clearing and holding territory, which cannot be done without transforming a corruption-riddled, anarchic...