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Interesting column by Gerald Seib in the Wall St. Journal:
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• Will the U.S. be a unilateral or a multilateral power?
When President Bush says, as he did in his State of the Union speech, that the U.S. will seek no "permission slips" to take military action, he suggests one answer. When Sen. John Kerry says, "I intend to be a president who goes back to the United Nations, rejoins the community of nations, brings other boots on the ground to help us in the world," he suggests another.
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• Is the current U.S. military structure fatally flawed?
Sen. Kerry is at least willing to address this question. In last week's debate, he renewed his call to expand the American military to meet commitments that have been made around the globe. He called for adding two divisions -- roughly 40,000 troops -- to the current active-duty force. (Right now, the Army has about 480,000 active-duty troops, and the military overall more than 1.3 million.)
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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disagrees. He resists calls for increasing troop strength, arguing that money spent on more troops would buy more punch if invested instead in information-age technologies in weapons systems. There, in a nutshell, is the making of a real debate.
• Will the U.S. figure out how to co-exist peacefully with Islam?
Much as co-existence with Communism defined the latter half of the 20th century, co-existence with Islam may well define the first half of the 21st century. Whatever you may think of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, the fact is that in their wake a whole new generation of Muslims is growing up immersed in rhetoric about American imperialism and arrogance toward Islam. And in the Arab world, at least, this impressionable new generation is huge. In most Middle Eastern countries, an astonishing 50% to 65% of the total population is under age 24.
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