Amidst all the doom and gloom there is a tiny ray of sanity. A while ago I wrote about the closing of the Army War College's Peacekeeping Institute at Carlisle Barracks, the only institute the U. S. army has which is devoted to peacekeeping. Given what is going on in Iraq, where soldiers untrained in anything other than killing are creating a disaster both for themselves and for the Iraqis, I thought this was typical miltaristic neocon dumbness. The good news is that it appears that the decision to close the Institute has been reversed, although they are being very coy about it (they first announced they were rethinking the issue in early July). I hope this signals the beginnings of a lot of reversals for the neocon civilians who are having such a terrible influence on the American military, the United States, and the world. A statement posted on the war college's site, which was scrubbed when MSNBC started asking questions about it, said:

"Following an Army senior leadership review, the capabilities of the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute (PKI) will be retained at the U.S. Army War College. The review determined that while the capabilities of the former PKI continue to be important to the Army, they are by themselves insufficient to address fully all aspects of stabilization missions such as those currently ongoing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Accordingly, the original PKI charter and structure are being adjusted in order to meet the full needs of the U.S. Army and the U.S. military in the coming years across a broad range of peacekeeping and stability operations. After restructuring, the organization will be renamed, most likely as the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI). The URL for the PKSOI’s specific web presence will be announced once it becomes active."

Good.