Long Game

The emotional scars of a conflict that had taken place decades earlier, therefore, were part of their relationship.

Today’s member of the ground forces will spend, if current trends hold true, an even greater percentage of his time in combat than did officers of the Vietnam generation.

As a result, the traditional competition of “civilian versus warrior” will be replaced by a series of new relationships and alliances.

they will have grown up in services at war.

Ultimately, they have a very different exposure to irregular warfare than their ground counterparts, if for no other reason than that there are far fewer two-way air or naval engagements in asymmetrical conflict.

They likely will have gone to elite universities for undergraduate and professional degrees. Neither they nor any member of their immediate family will have served in the military.

this group is the most inscrutable but also the most interesting to study

Perhaps more importantly, unlike in previous eras, our Army general of 2030 will be as much at home discussing governance as weapons systems, having wrestled with the issues since his days as a junior officer coaching some small village in Afghanistan or supervising a district meeting in Iraq.

the ground force general will be “conventionally unconventional,”

traditional political appointee has the weakest hand to play

Perhaps the more interesting case is a hybrid of the two—a mixture of low- and high-intensity conflict, particularly if it occurs outside the traditional turf of the current war on terror and, consequently, outside the realm of expertise of any single member of the quartet.

It's like Fox News without the punctuation.

If I've got potentially 40 more years of living ahead, I won't spend it as the kind of woman Bowling for Soup writes songs about. In truth, like many people my age, I hated high school and my 20s sucked as much as they rocked. So while we may take the baby barrettes out of our graying hair and no longer fit the description of grrrl, my generation has been pretty busy spending the last few decades living its life, starting its zines, cranking out some great music and generally not giving much of a crap about its hotness to begin with. I'll gladly answer to "slacker," but even if it's with a wink and a self-deprecating laugh over pleather miniskirts gone by, don't call me "formerly" anything. Because I'm not ready to assume my best years are behind me. And I don't ever want to define myself by what I've been. 

The first is the desire to prevent domestic grain prices from skyrocketing due to feared shortages.

The second reason is that the Kremlin wants to ensure that its supplies and production will hold up should the winter wheat harvest decline as well.

Russia’s conservatism when it comes to ensuring supplies and price stability arises from the reality that adequate grain supplies long have been equated with social stability in Russia.

But until the 1970s, marriage was actually an exception to the crime of rape. In every American state, a husband could rape his wife at will repeatedly. In 1975, South Dakota became the first state to enact a law against spousal rape.

Not satisfied with the possibility of acquittal or a reduced sentence, several American states made the murder of an adulterer no crime at all. Women, however, could not invoke the same defense.

The problem is, for every tenured professor who's liberated at age 40 to speak his mind, there are dozens of junior professors terrified to say anything the least bit controversial, lest they lose their one shot at job security for life.