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President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

Rudy Giuliani gave the commencement speech at the Citadel on Saturday and sketched out a proposal for a permanent nation-building apparatus. He whipped it out again at a Heritage Foundation dinner last night near the end of one of the better speeches I've heard from him in this campaign. Let's go to the tape: Maybe we have to start thinking about some kind of hybrid organization of our military and our civilian agencies of the government. There's a lot here that the Justice Department can bring to bear in places like Iraq and if we have to do another Iraq...

Page One article in today's Wall Street Journal on how the US Army is learning to swim like fish among the people in rural Afghanistan (sub req): A year ago, U.S. commanders here would have been reluctant to insert a small force of infantrymen into a remote village. But, along the Pech River and tributaries such as the Waygal, one 750-man U.S. Army battalion is trying a risky, grueling way to isolate the insurgents and win the support of the villagers. Instead of operating out of safe rear bases and commuting to the war, for the past year the soldiers...

Earlier this month, Jonah Goldberg declared, “The truth is that failed states are a direct threat to American and global security.” With respect to nation building, Goldberg looked back to the debates in the 2000 presidential election and concluded that “Gore was right and Bush was wrong, though neither quite appreciated why.” He concluded by advocating that the United States attempt to create a “League of Democracies, perhaps with NATO as its military wing and a souped-up version of the Peace Corps as its political wing, to shrug off charges of imperialism and to start doing windows.” That packs a...

Bush opens Iraq strategy overhaul by Olivier Knox 1 hour, 40 minutes ago CAMP DAVID, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said talk of a US withdrawal from Iraq was premature but placed new leaders in Baghdad squarely in charge of ultimately pacifying their country. ...snip... "The best way to win this war against an insurgency is to stand up a unity government which is capable of defending itself but also providing tangible benefits to the people," he said at the Camp David retreat in Maryland. ...snip... Bush also urged Iraq's neighbors and the international community to...

Perhaps the key to nation-building is not to "build" a nation at all, but allow it to emerge spontaneously from vital institutions. But can institutions be transplanted? With the formation of the new Iraqi government, it's a good time to take stock -- not just of the current situation, but of the very idea of nation building. Many people who read this publication are familiar with the concept known as spontaneous order. The economist Friedrich Hayek pointed out it's the kind of economic and social order that emerges without central planning. Indeed, such order cannot be planned because it is...

Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground by Robert D. Kaplan Random House. 421 pp. $27.95 Reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld Is America an empire, and, if so, is that a good or a bad thing, either for the U.S. or for the world? This question has been kicked around in recent years by polemicists from Noam Chomsky on the far fringe Left to Patrick Buchanan on the rabid Right and, more reflectively, by numerous scholars and intellectuals nearer the center. As the title of his new book suggests, Robert D. Kaplan is among those who believe America is indeed...

Amid the chaos in Iraq, one company of U.S. Special Forces achieved what others have not: a functioning democracy. How? By relying on common sense, the trust of Iraqis, and recollections from Political Science 101. Now, their commander reveals the gritty reality about nation-building in Iraq, from the ground up. As our long column of tan trucks rode down Iraq’s Business Highway 10 at 6 o’clock in the morning on April 9, 2003, I focused on my instincts and battle training, keeping an open mind and preparing for whatever lay ahead. After three weeks of intense firefights, the Fedayeen Saddam...

A survey released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center found more than four in 10 Mexicans are willing to leave their country to live in the US. One in five would risk a dangerous, illegal border crossing. Most surprising, one in three college graduates wants to flee. Before Washington takes up immigration reform this fall, it needs to take a hard look at Mexico's disillusionment. Already, one in eight adults born in Mexico now lives in the US. And the Mexican economy is kept afloat partially by an estimated $16 billion sent back by immigrants to relatives. Such numbers...

Framers of Iraq's constitution will designate Islam as the main source of legislation — a departure from the model set down by U.S. authorities during the occupation — according to a draft published Tuesday. The draft states no law will be approved that contradicts "the rules of Islam" — a requirement that could affect women's rights and set Iraq on a course far different from the one envisioned when U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. "Islam is the official religion of the state and is the main source of legislation," reads the draft published in the government...

GHAZNI, ARGHANISTAN--The line of army humvees stood motionless, engines running, waiting for the order to roll forward. Behind the convoy, concrete barriers and loops of concertina wire marked the edge of a U.S. firebase--a collection of plywood shacks, canvas tents, and shipping containers clustered around a long rectangular building that was once a Taliban madrassa. Ahead, a faint path of crushed snow snaked its way to the asphalt of the ring road--90 miles to Kabul on the right, 215 miles to Kandahar on the left, and a vast expanse of ice in every other direction. Welcome to Ghazni, Afghanistan's eighth...

Democracy for Everyone? High-violence societies may not be ready for representative government. by James L. Payne Do we know what it takes to implant democracy in a foreign land? For over a century now, the United States has been sending troops into troubled countries and trying to establish free and stable governments. While the results have not always been disappointing, the track record overall is not good. The results of our first effort, the 1898 intervention in Cuba, are typical. Following the Spanish-American War, the U.S. administered Cuba for four years, turning power over to an elected Cuban president in...

January 13, 2005 THE ELECTORATE Many Iraqis to Cast Votes in U.S. By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - Bush administration officials said Wednesday that an estimated 240,000 people living in the United States will be eligible to cast ballots in the coming election in Iraq, by voting in five American cities later this month. Citing figures compiled by the International Organization for Migration, an independent body that works closely with the United Nations, administration officials said that perhaps a million Iraqis over the age of 18 living in a total of 14 countries outside Iraq will be able...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. In the Baghdad night, awakened by the rumble of car bombs and the thump-thump of attack helicopters, Peter Smallwood lies in a sandbagged trailer counting his trees. In his mind's forest, the University of Richmond ecologist zigzags through a dark maze of Appalachian hardwoods until he finds specific specimens, unmarked among thousands. His favorite tree back home in Virginia is a majestic white oak that sprouted before Thomas Jefferson was president. Somehow it escaped the logger's blade. Now it soars 100 feet into the sky; one slice off its thick, scaly...

<p>IMAGES of the Vietnam War seem to be flooding into our lives lately. Footage of a young naval Lt. John Kerry, in fatigues, carrying an M-16, patrolling the Mekong Delta. President Bush, in an eerie echo of a previous president from Texas, vowing never to retreat in the face of aggression. Yet sitting recently in the Cafe Au Lac on a tree-lined street in Hanoi's old quarter, opposite the elegantly restored French- era Hotel Metropole, it was hard to remember why we fought that war.</p>

Paul Bremer, the American head of Iraq's interim administration, has made his farewell. Two days earlier than was expected, he has left the country; Iyad Allawi becomes Prime Minister and Iraq regains its sovereignty. Up to a point. More than 100,000 foreign troops will remain on its soil to battle with the forces of disorder, and the Iraqi treasury will depend on funds voted for by the American Congress to finance the work of reconstruction following last year's war, several wars before that and decades of maladministration by Saddam Hussein. The anti-war coalition, which now includes the whole of the...

Madam Secretary: A Memoir, by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward, New York: Miramax Books, 562 pages The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power, by George Soros, New York: Public Affairs, 207 pages Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire, by Wesley K. Clark, New York: Public Affairs, 218 pages Of all the historical precedents that paved the way for President George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, the most directly relevant was Bill Clinton’s 1999 bombing of the rump Yugoslavia. Like Gulf War II, the 78-day NATO air campaign in Kosovo was waged without the...

Chinese workers are flowing into Sudan for what is claimed to be the biggest international project secured by contractors from China. Growing familiarity with conditions in Sudan and more modest expectations for pay and profit seem to have been influential in the Chinese winning the $650-million civil contract for the Nile River's Merowe Dam, over 300 kilometers downstream of Khartoum. Since winning the contract last June from the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources, the CCMD Joint Venture has completed first stage river diversion. And it has begun excavation for the concrete section of the dam that will contain the...

<p>Exactly 10 years ago the world stood by as a genocidal rampage by ethnic Hutus against ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda claimed as many as 800,000 lives. Now something similar may be unfolding in western Sudan, a region even more remote from the world's gaze. Will humanity bestir itself to act, or will history repeat itself?</p>

Seventeen Kosovars have been killed in the worst outbreak of ethnic violence in that province since NATO forces arrived in 1999, NATO officials said. A company of U.S. soldiers now assigned to the stabilization force in Bosnia is moving to Kosovo to beef up NATO forces in the area. Another two companies are standing by, said a NATO spokesman. Six people were killed in Mitrovica, three in Lipljan, three in Caglavica, two in Urosevac, one in Pec, one in Gnjilane and one in the Kosovar capital of Pristina. The rioting reportedly began in Mitrovica, when ethnic Albanians gathered to protest...