As President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over
the United States'
prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has
long been the "graveyard of empires." In 1842, the British lost a nasty war
that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands
retreating from Kabul.
And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan,
only to give up ignominiously in 1989.
Still, Len M. Nichols, an economist who is director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation, said the industry had “come a long way from 1993-94,” when it helped defeat President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal coverage. ...
For his part, Jedediah Purdy creates an idea-packed sandwich in “A Tolerable Anarchy”: first a slice of radical American autonomy, which frightened both Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke (unnecessarily); then a slice of practical constraint on that autonomy, produced by Mother Nature herself in the form of a warming climate; and in between, a tour of American political history as it relates to the essence of freedom in different eras. This tour of freedom and its discontents passes through slavery…
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In early January 1988, 39 Soviet paratroopers were positioned on a cliff overlooking the Gardez-Khost road in southeastern Afghanistan. Their job was to protect the soldiers below, who were trying to open up the dangerous, heavily mined route. All around waited Islamic fundamentalists who had spent the last eight years fighting the Red Army and the government it had installed in Kabul just after Christmas 1979.
“In the race between an Iranian bomb and bombing Iran, we would win,” said Jeffrey G. Lewis, a nuclear specialist at the New America Foundation, a research group in Washington. “We would cave in the roof before they got a bomb’s worth of material. ...
For decades, psychologists have warned against giving
children prizes or money for their performance in school. "Extrinsic" rewards,
they say - a stuffed animal for a 4-year-old who learns her alphabet, cash for
a good report card in middle or high school - can undermine the joy of learning
for its own sake and can even lead to cheating. But many economists and
businesspeople disagree, and their views often prevail in the educational
marketplace. Reward programs that pay students are under way in many cities. In
But even if the bulk of the money goes to Gaza, it will do little good unless Israel first opens the border crossing into the territory, said Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a research organization in Washington. ...
“If you’re looking for ways to change the dynamic, there are other ways to do it,” said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. “Asia is all about face. What she’s done is to create a huge face problem ...
William H. Goetzmann believes America
at its best embodies what he calls "cosmotopian ideals": the United States
is a global civilization where all human ideas and experiences mingle.
Cosmotopia is the polestar of his strange and valuable book. "Beyond the
Revolution" is scornful of regionalists, traditionalists and anyone else who
would restrict the scope of American identity. It is richly populated with
radicals and utopians who, with one eye on the innermost soul and the other on
world history, created a tradition of open-ended experiment. Like many… more
The level received per student would vary considerably by state, according to an analysis by the New America Foundation, a research group that monitors ...
January 27, 2009
