Nov. 23, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Negotiating nuisances JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff Nov. 20, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry Nov. 19, 2009 Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes) Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics Nov. 18, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes) Nov. 17, 2009 Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations? JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung Nov. 16, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes) Nov. 13, 2009 JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes) Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity Nov. 12, 2009 The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes) Nov. 11, 2009 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes) Nov. 10, 2009 Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes) Nov. 9, 2009 Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes) Nov. 6, 2009 Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes) Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man Nov. 5, 2009 The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes) Nov. 4, 2009 Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered? JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes) Nov. 3, 2009 Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes) Nov. 2, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 19, 2006 / 27 Tishrei, 5767 If the U.S. won't send more troops to stabilize the country, it should assign more of its best officers to train Iraqis By Max Boot http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Of the many failures that have bedeviled the American military effort in Iraq, few are as inexplicable and costly as the failure to commit more resources to the Iraqi security forces. The only way U.S. troops will be able to go home without having failed in their mission is if Iraqis are capable of establishing order on their own. Yet U.S. efforts to train and equip the Iraqis got off to a laughable start in 2003 and have only slightly improved since. In the just-ended fiscal year, we spent $93.8 billion on U.S. troops in Iraq and just $3 billion on their indigenous counterparts. Most American troops live on giant bases complete with sprawling PXs and Internet cafes, and they go outside only in convoys of armored vehicles. Iraqi troops, by contrast, usually live in ramshackle quarters, often fail to receive enough ammunition or other essential supplies and have to travel in unarmored pickup trucks that make them easy prey for insurgents. Many of these shortcomings, of course, are because of the Iraqis' own inadequacies, particularly in the higher echelons and at the Ministry of Defense. But part of the blame falls on us for not doing more to bring the Iraqis along faster. It's not only a matter of money. We have more than 140,000 troops in Iraq, but fewer than 4,000 of them act as advisors. There are barely enough to go around for higher-level Iraqi headquarters; there are no "embeds" available to consistently operate at the company and platoon level, where most of the action occurs. The Iraqi police forces are even more neglected. What's more, some of the best and brightest American officers are being steered away from Iraqi units. Everyone in the U.S. armed forces knows that the way to the top is to command American units, not to advise foreign units — even if the latter task is more difficult and more important. One Army officer who has served in Iraq and would be well qualified for an advisory role told me recently that he was asked to become an ROTC instructor at home but not an advisor in Iraq. Those he sees being sent to help Iraqis tend to have "marginal career prospects." "No one is diverted from a school or command," he told me. "No one is sent after a successful command." Another experienced Army officer with a Special Forces background — exactly the kind of advisor we should be sending — actually tried to volunteer. He recalls being told by a personnel officer: "Boy, I would hate to waste you with an assignment like that. With your background and file quality, there are so many other billets I could assign you to." In a telephone interview from Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, commander of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, defended the advisory program by pointing out that it has become better over time. A school has been established at Ft. Riley, Kansas, where advisory teams receive 60 days of training before being sent to Iraq. This is a big improvement over the days when so-called military training teams would be established on the spot with members who were strangers to one another and had received no specialized training. But just because the program is better doesn't mean it's adequate. There is still a need for many more first-rate U.S. advisors to work with Iraqi army and police units down to the platoon level. T. X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel, believes that 20,000 to 30,000 advisors are needed and that we should be sending officers who have successfully led American battalions and brigades. "We're at least an order of magnitude off," Hammes told me. "If our main effort is advisory, why aren't our best people going to become advisors?" Perhaps because this would force a shake-up in the U.S. armed forces, with officers having to be pulled out of plum staff billets and field assignments. That's a tough change to make, but it may be necessary. A country of 26 million can't be controlled by 140,000 troops. If we're not going to send a lot more soldiers, it might make sense to draw down to about 40,000 to 50,000 troops so that we could free up officers and NCOs for advisor duty. Iraq may be too far down the road to civil war for this step to make any difference, but we need to try something different to salvage a situation spinning out of control. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times. To comment, please click here. Archives BOOT'S LATEST The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power   The book was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. Sales help fund JWR. © 2006, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Arnold Ahlert  Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works