"I face difficulties," admits Shahidullah Ahmadi, an illiterate recruited into the logistics section of the Afghan National Army. "If someone calls me and tells to go somewhere, I can't read the street signs." Ahmadi is not the only one. According to a new report, 90 percent of the Afghan army Publication: The American Conservative

David Bromwich Two stories by Elizabeth Bowen about wartime London have stayed with me since I read them 25 years ago. "Mysterious Kor" begins with a soldier, Arthur, and his girlfriend, Pepita, walking the streets: "Full moonlight drenched the city and searched it; there was not a niche left to Publication: The American Conservative

THE WORD "environmentalist" usually conjures images of dreadlocked campaigners in tie-dyed T-shirts who eat only organic muesli and never travel by car. Or of that painfully PC couple from Park Slope who carry their kids marsupial-style and make monthly donations to NPR. Or of earnest Greenpeace Publication: The American Conservative

I am very impressed by the article "Becoming Barbarians" (May 18) by Rod Dreher. If conservatives had been putting forth such perspectives rather than being mere handmaidens to neocon torturers, warmongers, and rabid capitalists, I'd have given you my ear much sooner. If you want to lose me again, Publication: The American Conservative

[Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Yale University Press, 704 pages] [Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, Susan Jacoby, Yale University Press, 272 pages] SHORTLY AFTER Lawrence Duggan, a top State Department official, was Publication: The American Conservative

THINGS SEEMED to be going very wrong for the state medical-marijuana movement. Two days after Barack Obama was sworn in, federal agents began a series of raids on licensed cannabis dispensaries and growers in California and Colorado--something Obama had suggested would not happen in his presidency. Publication: The American Conservative

[The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, Robert D. Novak, Crown Forum, 672 pages] SOME 36 YEARS AGO, when I was a student at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, I received a visit from a college chum who had become a congressional reporter for the Associated Publication: The American Conservative

If only Baghdad could be more like Coke. We'd "like to teach the world to sing," but our branding seems to be a bit off. According to a 211-page report commissioned by the U.S. Joint Forces CommandEnlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Publication: The American Conservative

ALICE WATERS might not seem like a conservative. A veteran of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, who once cooked a $25,000-a-seat fundraising dinner for Bill Clinton, she eagerly compares her campaign for edible schoolyards --where children work with instructors to grow, prepare, and eat fresh Publication: The American Conservative

The New York Times report that social conservatives are talking of bolting to a third-party candidate, should Rudy Giuliani get the GOP nomination, is another sign of the disintegrating Reagan coalition. In truth, that coalition--the 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Reagan won in 1984--was Publication: The American Conservative

Anyone who expected nation-building to go the way of the Bush administration misunderstands Barack Obama. The democracy crusade continues, perhaps not at gunpoint but well beyond Mesopotamia. In announcing his foreign-policy team, Obama said, They share my pragmatism about the use of power, and my Publication: The American Conservative

HISTORICAL ANALOGIES have been much in vogue since this election. Are we living at the end of 1932, preparing to face the glories and disasters of a revived New Deal? Or are we in a mirror-image 1980, the beginning of an era of liberal dominance, with a massive party realignment that might not even Publication: The American Conservative