Word: missioners
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...strangest sight I have ever seen," said the pilot of the spotter plane. It was Nov. 1, 1950, and he was looking at two divisions of Chinese infantry where none should have been, advancing under heavy shelling as if in a light rain. It was perhaps the first modern "mission accomplished" moment. The U.S. thought it had the Korean War sewn up, but it spent the next three years slugging it out with Mao's "volunteers." In The Coldest Winter (Hyperion; 736 pages), David Halberstam, who died in April, brings angry wisdom to a conflict that, after the moral clarity...
...case before the Supreme Court and hasn't mentioned it. "He don't have to," his neighbor answers. "He's gonna do it." A coda to that idea is offered in the elegiac new documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. One of the scenes shows the men of Mission Control lighting cigars after the 1969 splashdown of Apollo 11. Behind them, on a control room viewing screen, two words are projected: TASK ACCOMPLISHED. That may be a less triumphal phrasing than "mission," but whatever you call it, Americans knew enough not to boast about a thing until...
...from small decks and fly far inland to drop off combat-ready troops. As the Marines' Vietnam-era CH-46 choppers became obsolete, commanders started to dream of an aircraft that would give them more options when considering an amphibious assault. The dreams intensified following the failed Desert One mission in 1980 to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. In the course of the operation, three helicopters broke down, leading to an order to abort the entire endeavor, and a fourth chopper collided with a C-130 aircraft at a desert base, killing eight U.S. troops. That sent Pentagon bureaucrats hunting...
...that might have been dictated by the Persian poet Rumi. "I believe that Almighty God created the universe for mankind. Man is God's most important creation and it is through him that we appreciate the beauties of the universe. God has sent man here on a mission." That mission, he says, is to pursue love, justice, kindness and dignity. In fact, he repeats those works so often that it begins to sound like a mantra: Love. Justice. Kindness. Dignity. He speaks with the quiet zeal of a not-very-flamboyant televangelist. "The pursuit of justice through love and kindness...
...Bush laid out the universal declaration's broadest imperatives, which he said are necessary for true freedom and are central to the U.N.'s larger purpose. "Every member of the United Nations must join in this mission of liberation," he said, ticking through the declaration's list of "rights" to protection from poverty, illiteracy and disease. That's a fairly progressive position: liberal economists, like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, have said that basic human rights, like the right to vote, are only as good the social and economic rights that allow for them to be exercised effectively. Bush would never...