Word: diem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...piloting helicopters, fighter bombers and APCs, and serving in that most ambiguous of roles, as military advisors. Beyond hardware, the Kennedy Administration never came to grips with the true politics of the war and of Vietnam; instead, they stood by the hopelessly corrupt and unpopular regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and complained about getting bad press. (Interestingly, the Administration toyed at one point with the idea of getting rid of Diem's vicious and powerful brother, one of the more sordid features of a generally sor-did South Vietnamese government, by sending him off to teach at Harvard...
...most Kennedy did, despite some private doubts in his last months, was to undermine Diem's crooked Saigon regime--not exactly a profile in courage, especially after all Kennedy had tolerated from Diem and his cronies. At no point did Kennedy, after three years of steadily increasing violence, fundamentally rethink the rationale and feasibility of the American entanglement in Vietnam. Much to his credit, Kennedy was leery of committing combat troops; but he died with almost 17,000 Americans in Vietnam (a terrific increase from 800 in 1960), and almost 70 American deaths there. As Halberstam writes, "[Kennedy] had markedly...
...aside their normal lives for a weekend and fly all-expenses-paid to Austin? Fishkin is optimistic. "What you're offering these people is three days on national TV, a chance to meet the candidates, a chance to make history, a sunny climate and a reasonable per diem allowance," he says. "For a lot of these people, this will be the most important thing that has ever happened to them...
...Topper and the Kerbys explored the hereafter on TV. More recently, Field of Dreams cloaked the metaphysical in a baseball motif. In fact, the netherworld as a dramatic device is as old as theater. Anthony Minghella, writer and director of Truly, Madly, Deeply, a British variation of carpe diem, hails the technique as an inventive way to deal with loss and pain: "However dark these stories, they become an affirmation of life...
Dating after the Cold War: The prospects look bleak for a return to the golden biblical times of dating. As the probability of nuclear war declines, the carpe diem argument that brought many couples together will no longer work as well. Besides, who would want to go on a date when the world is changing...