Word: bitter
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even more than military victories, defeats teach important lessons. After its long and bitter experience in Vietnam, the U.S. had a lot of them to learn. American commanders had too often proved unimaginative and bureaucratic, their troops uninspired and all too frequently undisciplined. After the fall of Saigon, still more fiascoes fairly shouted of Pentagon ineptitude. An attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran broke down in the desert in 1980. In 1983 a terrorist's truck bomb killed 241 American servicemen, forcing the U.S. to beat an embarrassing retreat from its peacekeeping role in Lebanon...
...willing to accept that bitter trade-off. In exchange for recognition of the existence of rights transcending the government, we shall have an army which sends poor Blacks to die in disproportionate numbers. This is not "fair"; this is not "just." But it is, I believe, the lesser of two very substantial evils...
...easier. The battle was quick enough to prevent the coalition from fragmenting and pro-Saddam passions from boiling over. Yet it lasted long enough to give the allies time to truncate Iraq's military, neutralizing its mischiefmaking potential for some time to come. And by forcing Saddam to swallow bitter terms for a cease- fire, the allies have stripped him of his appeal as an Arab...
...decision to seek formal congressional approval for the war, from the Pentagon's avoidance of macho rhetoric to the insistence by antiwar protesters that they supported U.S. troops, Americans of all sorts seemed determined to get it right this time. To the extent that any of Vietnam's bitter aftertaste was present, it was in the tension between the press and the military. And even that had dissipated to some extent by last week, when General H. Norman Schwarzkopf delivered his extraordinary briefing in Riyadh...
...bitter or spiteful," he continued. "I don't ask 'Why does this happen to me?' I find encouragement with the fact that I'm getting my problems over with now, not when my pro career starts...