Word: defeatable
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...Shah's equation of modernization with Westernization proved folly. Like the Soviets, he ignored the strength of religious and indigenous mores. Harnessed to grievances (the Shah's repression, Soviet imperialism) and to technologies (U.S. Stinger missiles, in the case of the Afghan war), those sentiments became strong enough to defeat the Soviet forces and send the Shah into exile. Importing foreign ideologies or language can create bitter historical ironies. The nuclear program that the Shah championed as a symbol of his Westernization and modernization is now, in the hands of the Ahmadinejad regime, a symbol of precisely the opposite sentiment...
Ironically, the fruits of victory can sometimes contain seeds of defeat. With health care reform currently hanging by a thread and panic spreading through the Democratic ranks, it feels less like 1933 than 1993 - when another charismatic, inexperienced President prematurely tested the ice of post-Reagan liberalism, only to find it wouldn't support his activist agenda. Like Bill Clinton before him, Obama has been criticized for misreading his mandate, spending his political capital on health care reform at a time when millions fear for their jobs. It was as if FDR had devoted his first Hundred Days to promoting...
...troops. "To confront these criminals without scruples, the presence of the armed forces has been and is fundamental," he said. It would also be tough for Calderón to send the soldiers back to the barracks while the violence is worsening for fear it would concede a defeat. This quandary has led critics here to regularly compare the conflict to the Iraq war in Bush's second term; it is a war in which the President cannot claim victory, cannot pull out of, and which only gets worse...
...Republicans have used this rising disgust with government not just to cripple health care reform but also to derail other Obama initiatives. In a memo to clients on how to defeat new regulation of Wall Street, Republican pollster Frank Luntz urged them to attack "lobbyist loopholes" - items that were put into the financial-reform bill, as in the health care bill, largely to attract enough Democratic votes to break the GOP filibuster. Needing 60 votes has made the debate over every bill on Obama's agenda longer and uglier, which is exactly how the Republicans want...
...make us feel better to label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, but it's more instructive to look at things from the IRGC's perspective. It truly believes that its brand of asymmetrical warfare can defeat a modern, well-equipped force in a limited war. It did so in Lebanon, and given the right circumstances, it would do so in other parts of the Middle East. But the real point is that in a limited war with the U.S. and Israel, the IRGC could predominate, or at least wear us down to the point that we would decide...