Word: bunkerisms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...could barely breathe, a buddy who died. Last week, the 73-year-old veteran returned to the site of the battle that led to France's withdrawal from Vietnam. "It's changed a lot," he said, scanning a parking lot jammed with motorbikes near a carefully preserved French bunker. In a celebration both reverent and self-serving, the ruling Communist Party commemorated the 50th anniversary of the French surrender with fireworks and dance performances; in Paris, French President Jacques Chirac hailed his country's fallen soldiers who "turned a disaster into an epic." Vietnam's military mastermind General Vo Nguyen...
Buckley responds: I intended a little fun, in the context of teasing the pretensions of left-wing faculty. Archie Bunker-talk can come in handy. It is used as "yassir" might have been used, to suggest subordinate status...
...loyal retainers. I suspect the Woody Allen and Joe Public stories are true. They are moments when the curtain of platitudes is parted and the quality of Bush's sensibility is revealed. I also suspect the larger picture--the world as seen from the West Wing bunker--is distressingly accurate as well. Bush endures countless military briefings about the war to come. He pays assiduous attention to speech texts and rehearsals. But there are practically no meetings--or questions from the President--about what will happen in Iraq after the initial military success. There is only sad, soft Colin Powell...
...loyal retainers. I suspect the Woody Allen and Joe Public stories are true. They are moments when the curtain of platitudes is parted and the quality of Bush's sensibility is revealed. I also suspect the larger picture-the world as seen from the West Wing bunker-is distressingly accurate as well. Bush endures countless military briefings about the war to come. He pays assiduous attention to speech texts and rehearsals. But there are practically no meetings-or questions from the President-about what will happen in Iraq after the initial military success. There is only sad, soft Colin Powell...
Mohammad Sarfarz Khan strides up a short mud path to a tunnel dug into the hillside, enters and disappears. The 61-year-old Kashmiri villager is sure-footed in the gloom, feeling his way around the shelter with practiced confidence. When he reaches the inner bunker, Khan pulls a blanket around his shoulders and peers out of a small window. It is from here that, since 1989, he has watched thousands of Indian and Pakistani artillery shells describe golden arcs as they split the air of the valley below. "I suppose we were lucky," he says, of surviving 14 years...