Word: war
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...just finished a remarkable book called The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel. It is the best grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that I've read; certainly, it's the best written. But it also raises, implicitly, the mystery of our qualified success there. Finkel follows an Army battalion through the 2007 surge, as it attempts to secure a particularly nasty and neglected area of Baghdad. This was the first attempt to implement the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine, and the troops have their doubts about the new tactics. Major Brent Cummings, the second-in-command, reads...
...That was until Monday, when the majority U.S.-backed political bloc and its rivals in the Syria- and Iran-backed minority coalition finally agreed on a new power-sharing Cabinet. But while the deal ends the three-year political crisis that brought the country to the brink of civil war, it doesn't address the question underlying the dispute: Should Lebanon be a Westward-looking business-oriented tourist playground, or a frontline bastion of resistance to Israel...
...made Lebanese politicians wary of acting unilaterally, which is why Hariri invited Hizballah and its allies into the Cabinet in the first place. And Hariri is increasingly isolated, with none of his allies being prepared to confront Hizballah head-on given the experience of the May 2008 mini-civil war...
Lellouche's status as an unabashed Anglophile and ardent ally of both Britain and the U.S. is well-known in France, which makes his outburst all the more surprising. He was one of the few French politicians to back the U.S.- and Britain-led war in Iraq, and he has long championed both countries' relatively pro-Israel positions in the Middle East. A foreign policy wonk and NATO enthusiast, Lellouche has become a familiar figure in London, Washington and New York over the years, huddling with British and American politicians to influence decision-making on both sides of the Atlantic...
Moments later, late folksinger Noor Jehan's 1965 anti-India war song filled the air. Four decades after that song was written, as many Pakistanis now realize, it is the enemy within that poses the real threat. And Ismail Farid's wide-ranging collection of monochrome martial attire paid a somber-colored yet loud homage to those soldiers "who have lost their lives during past operations and the continuous terrorist attacks." Headgear ranged from stiff officers' hats to turbans coiled in razor wire. The makeup was smeared on faces to resemble battlefield camouflage and war wounds...