distract/detract

[Alison Murie]

/The Nation./ editorial this week, after the neat exhortation ("Lyndon
Johnson's War on Poverty was lost in the jungles of Vietnam.  We must
work to ensure that Obama's investment in America's future isn't
squandered in the mountains of Afghanistan"), rather spoils the effect
by going on, "But these questions should not _distract_ from what was
an eloquent call to mobilize.....&c."
AM

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