Word: moment
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That's why last weekend's NATO summit loomed as such a defining moment. When Clinton invited the 42 members and partners of NATO to Washington for a 50th birthday party, he envisaged a glittering capstone to his diplomatic legacy, grandly positioning the alliance as the bigger, broader 21st century mainstay of pan-European security. Instead he found himself presiding over a council of war. Those who feared that the decision to forgo ground troops from the start is dooming the allied cause set up a clamor for NATO to reconsider. A month after firing off its first cruise missiles...
That left NATO free to concentrate on shaping a new fighting strategy. The moment he arrived, British Prime Minister Tony Blair slapped the central issue on the table. If Milosevic and ethnic cleansing are to be defeated, he said, then NATO had to muster all the military means that it may require. Including ground troops. "All options are always kept under review," Blair repeated over and over. "Milosevic does not have a veto on what...
Evil on paper looks impressive (one of mankind's most important words, invested with the dignity of mystery and theology). But evil in actuality, when it touches down on earth like a tornado for a moment--as it did in Weston's visit to the Capitol, or last week in Littleton--may have a style so tacky, so moronic or so indelibly crazy that it gives off a radiant tabloid weirdness. This almost novelistic sheen of the loony makes the tragedies curiously hard to evaluate. The evil effect is evident--innocent blood everywhere; the cause, in the case of Littleton...
...massacre in Colorado did raise a serious issue, yet again: gun control. Newspapers all over the world published sanctimonious editorials about the "American gun culture." The National Rifle Association went on sensitivity alert; in a rare moment of self-effacement it canceled the festive public events and gun show planned around its annual meeting, but not the meeting itself, which by coincidence is scheduled for this week in Denver...
...held him facedown across his knees. "Have you been good in school? Have you been obeying your teachers? Have you been nice to your parents?" Each question was punctuated with a tickle, so the boy's "Yes!" responses were sung in breathless hysteria. It was a lighthearted moment in a year that has been heavy with pain and injustice. As the boy dashed out of the living room, the adults quickly turned sober again. Rosetta Crawford, the boy's grandmother and family matriarch, took a drag on her cigarette and said softly, "We were a quiet family. But somehow...