Word: base
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...comparison in "5 Things We Can Learn from China" between the educational systems in China and the U.S. is off base [Nov. 23]. Unlike in China, in the U.S., every child is entitled to an education regardless of background or learning ability. Early tracking of students in China ensures that only the best and brightest can receive college-prep education; others are put into vocational schools or the workforce. If I taught only students who had parental support and spent hours on homework, I certainly could show higher test scores. But I believe that anyone can achieve his dream...
...slowest weeks on Hollywood's calendar. All new movies are subject to the law of gravity, even a smash like New Moon. In 17 days, the interspecies love story sold more than 35 million tickets in North America alone, and it was bound to exhaust its fan base at some point. Meanwhile, The Blind Side's constituency, skewing older than New Moon's teen-vixen pack, took its time catching up with the movie's eloquent word of mouth. But no one need feel sorry for New Moon. Its domestic gross, $255.6 million, is nearly double that of The Blind...
...Obama made the threat of al-Qaeda's returning on the back of a Taliban victory the primary rationale for escalating the war in Afghanistan. But as many have pointed out, al-Qaeda doesn't need sanctuaries in order to plot terrorist attacks, and its leadership core is based in the neighboring tribal areas of Pakistan - which means that 100,000 U.S. troops are now being committed to a mission whose goal is to prevent a few hundred men from re-establishing a base of operations...
...weakness of the central government as its cause. Even in the times of greatest stability, Afghanistan has been governed from the center via a loose consensus among powerful regional and ethnic leaderships. Karzai might, in fact, have been governing the way a leader without a major national political base of his own deems it necessary to survive in a post-U.S. Afghanistan. And putting his government under stronger Western tutelage risks further undermining his legitimacy in the eyes of many of his own people. (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley...
...threat of Taliban extremism, and the Pakistani military sees the Karzai government as being under Indian sway. As a result, Pakistan's large-scale military offensives against the Taliban have been confined to those who challenge the authority of the Pakistani state; those who use Pakistan as a base from which to launch attacks in Afghanistan have been largely unmolested. (See pictures of the training of Afghanistan's police force...