Word: soldierly
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Peacekeeping is not what the U.S. troops were trained to do. Soldiers whose combat edge has been honed inside an M-1 tank are not well equipped to provide a war's victims with food and water. And the longer soldiers spend as occupiers, the less ready they feel for pure combat and the more unhappy they become. "The worst thing you can do, in terms of retention, is to have square pegs stuck in round holes," says David Chu, the Pentagon's personnel chief. "The guy or gal who doesn't get to do what he or she signed...
That view may be honestly held. In much of Iraq, life is slowly improving (though three British soldiers were killed in Basra on Saturday), and coalition forces continue to pick up leaders of Saddam's regime. Last week Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his use of chemical weapons in northern Iraq, was taken into custody. But honesty also requires a plain admission that the audacious attempt by the Bush Administration to pacify an arc of crisis that runs from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush has provoked many such desperate reactions by those opposed...
...jihadists who have flocked to Iraq; or a noxious combination of all the above. Treat every such opinion as if it carried a health warning. The plain truth is that nobody knows who is responsible for atrocities like the Baghdad bomb. Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S.'s top soldier in Iraq, has often said the thing he lacks most is not more men but better intelligence. Asked how many foreign jihadists might have entered Iraq, a senior White House official was honest enough to admit, "I don't think we really have a good sense of what the numbers...
...control to make Abbas strong enough to challenge the militants. According to a Palestinian source, before he acts, Abbas wants guarantees from Arafat, including a written statement supporting a strike against Hamas. Even then, the prospect of fraternal bloodshed might daunt the Palestinian Authority rank and file. An Authority soldier told TIME a few weeks ago, "I don't want to betray my people or be killed for the $300 a month I earn...
...weapons, is also expecting a prestige boost. "We want to have credibility," asserts Milan Vanga, a Defense Ministry spokesman. But credibility that may be purchased in blood provokes some disquiet. "Hopefully, after the Yankees are gone, the locals will not understand that we are few and weak," a Bulgarian soldier now based in Karbala told a reporter for Trud, Bulgaria's largest daily. "This is my first mission and I am already scared." That concern is not limited to Central Europe. In Japan in July, Diet members attached to its pacifist tradition came to blows with those who ultimately...