What we owe Iraq Feldman, Noah
2004., 20090110, 2009, 2004, 2005-01-01, 20040101
eBook
America is up to its neck in nation building--but the public debate, focused on getting the troops home, devotes little attention to why we are building a new Iraqi nation, what success would look ...like, or what principles should guide us. What We Owe Iraq sets out to shift the terms of the debate, acknowledging that we are nation building to protect ourselves while demanding that we put the interests of the people being governed--whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or elsewhere--ahead of our own when we exercise power over them. Noah Feldman argues that to prevent nation building from turning into a paternalistic, colonialist charade, we urgently need a new, humbler approach. Nation builders should focus on providing security, without arrogantly claiming any special expertise in how successful nation-states should be made. Drawing on his personal experiences in Iraq as a constitutional adviser, Feldman offers enduring insights into the power dynamics between the American occupiers and the Iraqis, and tackles issues such as Iraqi elections, the prospect of successful democratization, and the way home.
Building the Nationdraws from foreign-policy reports and interviews with U.S. military officers to investigate recent U.S.-led efforts to "nation-build" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Heather Selma Gregg ...argues that efforts to nation-build in both countries mistakenly focused more on what should be called state-building, or how to establish a government, rule of law, security forces, and a viable economy. Considerably less attention was paid to what mighttrulybe called nation-building-the process of developing a sense of shared identity, purpose, and destiny among a population within a state's borders and popular support for the state and its government.According to Gregg, efforts to stabilize states in the modern world require two key factors largely overlooked in Iraq and Afghanistan: popular involvement in the process of rebuilding the state that gives the population ownership of the process and its results and efforts to foster and strengthen national unity. Gregg offers a hypothetical look at how the United States and its allies could have used a population-centric approach to build viable states in Iraq and Afghanistan, focusing on initiatives that would have given the population buy-in and agency. Moving forward, Gregg proposes a six-step program for state and nation-building in the twenty-first century, stressing that these efforts are as much abouthowstate-building is done as they are about specific goals or programs.
Ridge reconstruction (RR) method is one of the most commonly used ways for non-stationary signal reconstruction from time-frequency representations. However, this method leads to a large ...reconstruction error when dealing with strongly amplitude-modulated and frequency-modulated (AM–FM) signals. To tackle this problem, in this Letter the authors propose a new and powerful reconstruction approach, named high-order RR, by considering the high-order derivative information of amplitude and phase of the signal. In particular, an explicit reconstruction formula for second-order RR is derived. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach in reconstruction accuracy when addressing AM–FM signals, as well as the stability for the selection of window width.
Sevastopol, located in present-day Ukraine but still home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet and revered by Russians for its role in the Crimean War, was utterly destroyed by German forces during World ...War II. InFrom Ruins to Reconstruction, Karl D. Qualls tells the complex story of the city's rebuilding. Based on extensive research in archives in both Moscow and Sevastopol, architectural plans and drawings, interviews, and his own extensive experience in Sevastopol, Qualls tells a unique story in which the periphery "bests" the Stalinist center: the city's experience shows that local officials had considerable room to maneuver even during the peak years of Stalinist control.
Qualls first paints a vivid portrait of the ruined city and the sufferings of its surviving inhabitants. He then turns to Moscow's plans to remake the ancient city on the heroic socialist model prized by Stalin and visited upon most other postwar Soviet cities and towns. In Sevastopol, however, the architects and city planners sent out from the center "went native," deviating from Moscow's blueprints to collaborate with local officials and residents, who seized control of the planning process and rebuilt the city in a manner that celebrated its distinctive historical identity.
When completed, postwar Sevastopol resembled a nineteenth-century Russian city, with tree-lined boulevards; wide walkways; and buildings, street names, and memorials to its heroism in wars both long past and recent. Though visually Russian (and still containing a majority Russian-speaking population), Sevastopol was in 1954 joined to Ukraine, which in 1991 became an independent state. In his concluding chapter, Qualls explores how the "Russianness" of the city and the presence of the Russian fleet affect relations between Ukraine, Russia, and the West.
Best practices in post-disaster housing and community reconstruction are constantly evolving. Technology is changing how reconstruction is done, as is the frequency and severity of the disasters ...themselves. Reconstruction projects are increasingly focused on the need to reduce future risks by ensuring that what is rebuilt is safer and more disaster-resilient than what was there before. The expanding role of communities in managing community reconstruction, with financial and technical assistance from government, is another way reconstruction is changing.Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Natural Disasters provides advice on how to ensure that reconstruction empowers communities to rebuild, and gives them the support they need to build back in a way that the risk of future disasters is greatly reduced. Written for policy makers and project managers engaged in major housing and community reconstruction programs, the handbook provides guidance on the roles and responsibilities of various actors, and explains what the scope of a reconstruction policy should be and how decisions in each aspect of reconstruction contribute to larger reconstruction goals. For project managers who will be charged with implementing reconstruction policy, the handbook provides guidance on the options that should be considered in each aspect of reconstruction, and examples of where they have been used in other reconstruction projects. It includes more than one hundred short case studies collected from global experts with recent experience in housing reconstruction, that illustrate how the policies and practical ideas have been used on the ground. It also includes links to extensive technical information on the topics covered by the handbook.
The eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002 was incomprehensibly brutal - it is estimated that half of all female refugees were raped and many thousands were killed. While the ...publicity surrounding sexual violence helped to create a general picture of women and girls as victims of the conflict, there has been little effort to understand female soldiers' involvement in, and experience of, the conflict. Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone draws on interviews with 75 former female soldiers and over 20 local experts, providing a rare perspective on both the civil war and post-conflict development efforts in the country. Megan MacKenzie argues that post-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process, demonstrating that a clear recognition and understanding of the roles and experiences of female soldiers are central to both understanding the conflict and to crafting effective policy for the future.
In recent years, as one of the important tasks of computer vision, 3D reconstruction has received extensive attention. This paper focuses on the research progress of using deep learning to ...reconstruct the 3D shape of general objects in recent years. Taking the steps of 3D reconstruction by deep learning as the context, according to the data feature representation in the process of 3D reconstruction, it is divided into voxel, point cloud, surface mesh and implicit surface. Then, according to the number of inputting 2D images, it can be divided into single view 3D reconstruction and multi-view 3D reconstruction, which are subdivided according to the network architecture and the training mechanism they use. While the research progress of each category is discussed, the development prospects, advantages and disadvantages of each training method are analyzed. This paper studies the new hotspots in specific 3D reconstruction fields in recent years, such as 3D reconstruction of dynamic human bodies and 3D completion
Disparities in postmastectomy reconstructive care are widely acknowledged. However, there is limited understanding regarding the impact of reconstructive services on cancer recurrence and breast ...cancer-related mortality. Therefore, this study aims to examine how patient-specific factors and breast reconstruction status influence recurrence-free survival and mortality rates in breast cancer patients.
Retrospective chart review was performed to collect data on patients who underwent mastectomy at 2 institutions within the New York-Presbyterian system from 1979 to 2019. Sociodemographic information, medical history, and the treatment approach were recorded. Propensity score matching, logistic regression, unpaired t test, and chi-square test were used for statistical analysis.
Overall, cancer recurrence occurred in 6.62% (317) of patients, with 16.8% (803) overall mortality rate. For patients who had relapsed disease, completion of the reconstruction sequence was correlated with an earlier detection of cancer recurrence and improved survival odds (P < 0.05). Stratified analysis of the reconstruction group alone showed mortality benefit among patients who underwent free flap procedures (P < 0.05).
Patients undergoing breast reconstruction after mastectomy are likely to have better access to follow-up care and improved interfacing with the healthcare system. This may increase the speed at which cancer recurrence is detected. This study highlights the need for consistent plastic surgery referral and continued monitoring by all members of the breast cancer care team for cancer recurrence among patients.
The fall of the United Nations 'safe area' of Srebrenica in July 1995 to Bosnian Serb and Serbian forces stands out as the international community's most egregious failure to intervene during the ...Bosnian war. It led to genocide, forced displacement and a legacy of loss. But wartime inaction has since spurred numerous postwar attempts to address the atrocities' effects on Bosnian society and its diaspora. Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide reveals how interactions between local, national and international interventions - from refugee return and resettlement to commemorations, war crimes trials, immigration proceedings and election reform - have led to subtle, positive effects of social repair, despite persistent attempts at denial. Using an interdisciplinary approach, diverse research methods, and more than a decade of fieldwork in five countries, Lara J. Nettelfield and Sarah E. Wagner trace the genocide's reverberations in Bosnia and abroad. The findings of this study have implications for research on post-conflict societies around the world.
