The NDP's ideas have already been tried, and they have already failed catastrophically. This is why UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon describes the ground that the NDP has staked out as "a misjudgement of historic proportions. " It's because the position demands "the repetition of a mistake that has already had terrible consequences."

Quite apart from the earth-rattling mistake the "international community" made when it abandoned the Afghan people to the Taliban in the first place, Canada has already tried withdrawing its troops. We already did that once. After joining with NATO in driving out the Taliban, we joined an exodus of foreign troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2002. Canada withdrew its troops, our meagre successes were slammed into reverse, and the whole country started sliding back into barbarism again. Canadian soldiers returned to Kabul, and only Kabul, in 2003, where we confined ourselves to various light duties around town while the rest of the country went to the dogs.

It was only after the Afghan Women's Network began to mobilize across Afghanistan, and roused demands that ISAF help extend the rule of law throughout the country, that NATO was forced to face its mistake. It wasn't until February of 2006 that Canada took the lead for security in Kandahar. By this time, the Taliban had re-armed, regrouped, and was back at its grisly business of throat-slitting and head-chopping and terror. We've all been living with the "troops out" consequences ever since....

The 937-page novel isn't a cautionary tale; it's an escapist fantasy for readers who miss the joys of studious immersion in math, science and philosophy. What if, Mr. Stephenson wonders, the world's most earnest intellectuals cloistered themselves, shunning any thought of Internet video or quarterly results, to focus on 1,000-year projects? If word problems got you excited in school, this is the novel for you.

The tale -- set far in the future, on a planet called Arbre -- is told by Erasmus, an 18-year-old member of a monk-like sect, the Concent of Saunt Edhar, that has been walled off from the "saecular" outside world for 3,000 years. Barefoot in only a robe and a belt, Erasmus spends his days studying and his nights geeking out with friends. When he's not calculating celestial mechanics, he's participating in meticulous rituals that hone his ability to handle complex systems in his mind.

Here's the catch: None of St. Edhar's male and female devotees uses any sort of computers or electronics. They do their math by hand, scratching out equations on paper that lasts for millennia. They memorize their world's knowledge rather than using a search-engine crutch. Instead of arguing sports or breaking into fistfights, Erasmus's teenage friends pour their hormonal energies into heated philosophical jousts and stylized combat maneuvers. They consume oversize books as eagerly as the less- educated slines outside their walls feast on fast food and porn.

But to be clear, the Concent of Saunt Edhar isn't a religious order. Erasmus and his fellow fraas and surrs (brothers and sisters) revere visionary scientists and intellectuals from their past. Religions are regarded as intractable fads among the foolish slines. Deadly sins at Saunt Edhar's are flawed logic and sloppy methodology.

Whether the Kajaki Dam is a turning point in the war, or just another brilliant success on the road to defeat, only time will tell. But for now, let us praise USAID, and the courageous soldiers who went where only eagles dare, to deliver power to the Afghan people. Operation Eagle Summit was a brilliantly planned, brilliantly executed, unqualified success. It was a giant step forward, and a demonstration that ISAF leadership is willing to undertake the type of difficult and risky projects we need to win.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current inflated status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains really did get more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but the acquisition of those skills got conflated with the existing system of colleges, which had evolved the BA for completely different purposes.

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

There is no challenge greater than the defense of our nation and our values. The men and women of our military - from Fort Carson to Peterson Air Force base, from the Air Force Academy to the ROTC students here on campus - have signed up at a time when our troops face an ever-increasing load. Fighting a resurgent Taliban. Targeting al Qaeda. Persevering in the deserts and cities of Iraq. Training foreign militaries. Delivering humanitarian relief. In this young century, our military has answered when called, even as that call has come too often. Through their commitment, their capability, and their courage they have done us all proud.

But we need to ease the burden on our troops, while meeting the challenges of the 21st century. That's why I will call on a new generation of Americans to join our military, and complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.

Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

In today's society, there are really two arenas where there is significant mixing between the classes - public education and the military. One reason why I am so unwilling to give up on public education (even if some liberal friends don't like my hypothetical solutions) is that I think it vital that the children of the well-off get raised alongside the children of the rich and the children of the poor to the extent we can do so. Our sons benefited hugely from being raised in a public school system (an excellent one) that nonetheless contains a mixture of wealthy kids, upper-middle-class kids, plain middle-class kids and some blue-collar kids. By comparison, the kids of my friends who are getting 'better' education in private schools are - I believe - coming out worse for the experience....

I'd like to see this principle extended, and based on raising my own sons, think that taking a year or two between high school and college to do some kind of public service would be a good thing for most kids. Some might choose to join the military. Others would perform other kinds of community service. Those who needed it might attend two years of an academic boot camp, designed to make sure they could read and calculate effectively when they got out. We'd have a surplus of undertrained 18 year olds afoot, and we'd have to figure out things to do with them. Parks need supervision, community organizations need workers, much of it - like the WPA - will be make-work. But to a big extent, that might be a better thing than paying universities to babysit them.

One of the most insidious things about the disease of alcoholism–and it is a disease, despite the best efforts of thundering moralists to deny the science and the plain medical and biochemical facts–is that it plays on your character defects (which all people have) and, worse, it progresses slowly.

OK, but I just said it may be possible to do something before you get to advanced stages to prevent advanced stages. Some will thunderingly declare that this is impossible. That’s particularly true in AA circles (as I say, I endorse the program, but I grant that its critics are often right on certain things, and "closed-mindedness" is one valid criticism).

There are two books I recommend reading, *with caution.* One is Stanton Peele’s Truth About Addiction And Recovery.

Peele is a professional substance abuse counselor. What he’ll tell you is that some people with problems can find ways to control and manage their problem and still drink with moderation. That is scandalous heresy in AA circles and among some substance abuse counselors. But the most important thing to understand from what he says (and he’s got plenty of clinical experience as well as scientific studies to back him up) is that this is true for *some*. He is quite open that for some people, this will just not be possible, and they’re going to have to accept that drinking is just not an option for them. Not because they have character defects, but because their brain chemistry is just not going to allow for it. But as you might suspect, if it’s a brain chemistry issue, then some people are going to have brain chemistry that does allow for it.

This is why it’s important to understand that alcoholism is not a character defect. Character defects may lead you to alcoholism, especially because all people have character defects and alcohol is an easy way to experience pleasure and stress relief. Your character defects can lead you to alcoholism, but the alcoholism itself is not the defect in your character, it’s a defect in your brain chemistry. (Let’s leave aside questions about whether all character issues are brain chemistry issues, which will make us wander off into philosophical weeds that we’ll never get out of.) Just like character defects (which we all have) might lead you to get syphilis, but the syphilis itself is not a character defect, it’s a disease that needs treatment.

What’s also well-documented about the disease, even symptomatic, is that the alcoholic will occasionally undergo “dry spells” where they “prove” to themselves and others that they’ve got the problem “under control” by just not drinking, or by moderating their intake. I myself had such a dry spell 3-4 years ago, where I went about 100 days without drinking, trying a few meetings and then giving up on them because I hated them...

You have instances where you do indeed don’t-drink, or succeed in your goal to drink less. But you don’t notice that the times you fail are increasingly more frequent than the times you succeed. You see the success (”See! last night I said I’d have only two, and I had only two!”) but the failures are just things you kick yourself for in the morning, with much self-abuse, and then move on.

It did not work for me, partly because I was lazy and did not actually keep the log, I thought I could do it in my head. Now it’s too late for me. But I know it works for others because I’ve talked to people for whom it did. The goal is to get yourself to where you take no more than 14 drinks in any week, and no more than 4 at any one sitting. Why? Because that’s what scientific research says is not just safe, but may actually be beneficial to your health; moderate alcohol consumption at that level is arguably good for you, extending lifespan and reducing risk of certain diseases, particularly heart disease.

(That’s another scandalous heresy in some circles. Alcohol good for you?!? Yes, it can be. That, too, is one of the reasons why the disease of alcoholism is progressive and insidious.)

With scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Jakubowicz and her colleagues compared their high-carb and protein "big breakfast" diet with a strict low-carb diet in 94 obese, sedentary women.

At four months, there was no significant weight-loss difference between the two diet groups. Women on the strict low-carb diet shed an average of about 28 pounds, while women on the big breakfast diet lost nearly 23 pounds, on average.

But at eight months, the low-carb dieters regained an average of 18 pounds, while the big breakfast dieters continued to lose weight, shedding another 16.5 pounds.

Those on the big breakfast diet lost more than 21 per cent of their body weight, compared with just 4.5 per cent for the low-carb group.

The 46 women on the very-low-carb diet consumed 1,085 calories a day, consisting of 17 grams of carbohydrates, 51 grams of protein and 78 grams of fat. The smallest meal was breakfast, at 290 calories. For breakfast, the low-carb dieters were allowed only 7 grams of carbohydrates, such as bread, fruit, cereal and milk, and they could eat just 12 grams of protein, such as meat and eggs, in the morning.

In contrast, the 48 women on the "big breakfast diet" consumed 1,240 calories a day. Although lower in total fat (46 grams) than the other diet, the big breakfast diet had higher daily allotments of carbs (97 grams) and protein (93 grams). Dieters ate a 610-calorie breakfast, consisting of 58 grams of carbs, 47 grams of protein and 22 fat grams.