Word: boxer
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About to head over to Europe in continued support of their critically-acclaimed new album “Boxer,” The National managed to show just what all the hype’s about. With Berninger’s burly pipes channeling the lonely knell of Nick Cave, the lyrical moroseness was palpable in the dark nightclub...
...just that security contractors are allowed to use lethal force and not worry about going to jail; a Western security contractor will make in a week what an Iraqi might make in a year. Private security contractors are a humiliation equal to the humiliations that provoked the Boxer Rebellion in China or drove Iranians to overthrow the Shah. Security contractors may be keeping our officials alive, but they are not winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis...
California Senator Barbara Boxer almost asked a good question at the Petraeus-Crocker festivities on Capitol Hill this week. She was reminiscing, as most of her colleagues did, about time spent on the ground in Iraq with General David Petraeus, but it was not a recent visit. It was back in 2005, when Petraeus was in charge of training the new Iraqi army. An aide pulled out a blown-up photograph of the Senator and the general. "You were so upbeat, General," Boxer said. "You said, 'You're about to see some terrific troops.'" There were 100,000 of them...
...unasked question was so profound that Petraeus, a proud man, chose to answer it anyway. "I believe that my optimism back when I showed those very fine Iraqi forces to Senator Boxer was justified," he said. The good work was undone, though, in 2006, when Shi'ite militias "hijacked" whole units of the Iraqi military. But, he insisted, we are back on the right track now. Petraeus may well be right-or maybe not. The nature of military leadership is congenital optimism; officers are trained to complete the mission, to refuse to countenance the possibility of failure. That focus...
...That's not nearly enough, of course. There was an important follow-up that Boxer didn't ask either: Without a strong, credible central government, for whom exactly is the re-retrained Iraqi army fighting? How can any Iraqi be loyal to a government that doesn't exist? And, finally, now that the Sunnis have decisively rejected the extremists, why should any American trooper sacrifice even a pinkie in this sectarian catastrophe...