Word: lessons
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...Administration has continued its quiet cultivation of Kayani, who has acted more aggressively against insurgents in recent months, with full-scale aerial assaults. On Aug. 6 he launched a massive operation in Bajaur tribal agency, an insurgent-ridden area along the border. But the exercise was a lesson in being careful what you wish for. Pakistan's army was built to fight a conventional war with India and is ill equipped to handle violence at home. Three weeks of air strikes forced more than 260,000 residents to flee the region; many ended up in squalid camps. They have turned...
...what exact degree physical activity can influence the effect of the FTO gene isn't clear yet, but, says Rampersaud, at least we now know that genes - especially the "wrong" genes - don't necessarily spell out destiny when it comes to weight. And that's a useful lesson to keep in mind when making small daily decisions - taking the stairs instead of the elevator, say, or passing up a dessert. Every little bit can make a difference...
...That lesson was taken to heart by the extraordinarily skillful foreign-policy team around President George H.W. Bush, which was convinced that it was dangerous to rub Moscow's nose in its own failure. As Western policy shifted in the Clinton years toward doing more to protect those who had suffered Soviet domination, there was no shortage of those who argued that Washington was playing with fire. I remember those debates very well. They were vigorous and impassioned. For all those who warned that it was unwise to poke the Russian bear in the eye, there were those (myself included...
...Beyond that, the key lesson of the past is a depressing one. There were no good, costless choices over NATO expansion, much less over Kosovo. A decision to withhold NATO membership from Eastern Europe, and to leave the Kosovars to their fate, would have exposed as hypocrites those who had spent the Cold War taking the high moral ground against the Soviet Union. But sometimes, we have just been reminded, good intentions are not enough to ward off tragedy. That's one reason why it's always worth keeping a volume of Yeats' poetry close at hand...
...hope nobody gets a false sense of security." The barrier islands that once protected New Orleans have eroded, and most of the city's nearby marshes are gone. Every hour, Louisiana loses more than a football field's worth of the wetlands that once provided natural hurricane protection. The lesson of Gustav, in other words, is that the lessons of Katrina still apply. "Coastal restoration is one of those things politicians say, like 'I owe it all to my lovely wife,'" says Tulane law professor Oliver Houck, who has been warning about land losses for decades. "Meanwhile, we keep building...