Word: mayaguez
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After its misadventures in Indochina, the nation is feeling its way, sometimes truculently, toward a redefinition of its influence, military and otherwise, in the world. The U.S. has taken on a certain bristle, a tendency that was evident last week in Senate debate over the defense budget. In the Mayaguez incident, Gerald Ford, indebted more to McLuhan than to Clausewitz, struck off an image of American decisiveness after years in the Asian morass. Ford also hastened to Europe to reassure the NATO allies of America's steadfastness (see THE WORLD...
Buoyed by the Mayaguez rescue and many economists' predictions that recovery from the recession is just around the corner, Americans seem to be regaining confidence in their country and its future. Some 40% now believe that things are going well in the country, up sharply from 23% in February. Slightly more than one out of three Americans still worry a lot about becoming unemployed, but the number concerned about inflation has dropped to 53%, down twelve points since last winter. Moreover, the public shows no signs of turning isolationist because of the failure of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia...
...crow about American resolve when the status quo was restored but proceeded to construct on this foundation further peaceful links with the other side (including the nuclear test-ban treaty and hot line). Let us hope that President Ford, who has been admirably restrained in his rhetoric about the Mayaguez, can also convert this experience with confrontation into a new effort for cooperation...
...report promptly after doing so, may simply permit a President to throw such decisions "back into Congress's lap"-to the lawmakers' political embarrassment. Ford may not have fully "consulted" Congress before he ordered U.S. armed strikes on Cambodia to free the crew of the Mayaguez merchant ship. But Alton Frye, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that Ford had begun reporting to Congress, thus setting the stage to "trigger congressional deliberation" if the military operation had been prolonged or gone sour...
...breathtaking and scary as hell. Maybe it is time to be represented by people who don't think in such terms when there are no victories left for anyone anywhere. A society that feels itself called upon to go shouting into the streets for the victory in the Mayaguez campaign is surely in need of a hard second look...