Word: missioners
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Natsios’ comments are deeply troubling. Referring to the NGOs as merely “an arm” of government demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of their mission and public value. True, the government ultimately has the right to choose who receives its contracts. But it is vital that NGOs be allowed to retain their independence. An unswerving commitment to their causes often demands that NGOs offer a critical perspective on government policy. But the Bush administration would rather co-opt these groups or, failing that, prosecute them a la Greenpeace...
...Marine, training in Kuwait's northern desert and waiting for war to begin, wondered whether protesters would spit on him when he came home. But for all the dissension, no one was blaming the soldiers: antiwar demonstrators argued they were fighting to defend our troops against an ill-conceived mission based on distorted intelligence. Even Howard Dean, whose antiwar campaign ambushed the Democratic Party, criticized Bush for asking too much of the nation's soldiers and reserves and diverting attention from more imminent threats...
...strength but subtlety. Liberty can't be fired like a bullet into the hard ground. It requires, among other things, time and trust, and a nation scarred by tyranny and divided by tribe and faith is not going to turn into Athens overnight. A force intensely trained for its mission finds itself improvising at every turn, required to exercise exquisite judgment in extreme circumstances: Do you shoot the 8-year-old when he picks up the grenade launcher? How do you win the hearts and minds of residents in a town you've had to wrap in barbed wire...
...Rookie's Mission...
...know the way," Frodo Baggins, the unlikely hero of The Lord of the Rings, declares of his mission to destroy the fateful ring of J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination. In the cinematic epic that gave us the artistic exclamation point to 2003, Frodo spoke for many. This was surely the year in which we ambled hopefully, foolishly, gamely into the dark. Some would like to ascribe the many human failings of the year to willful deception. Bush lied! But cover-ups are not as common in human history as screw-ups. This was, rather, a year in which...