Word: tonkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...victory made a major change in the political and strategic world picture on the western shore of the Pacific. From Bering Strait to the Gulf of Tonkin Communism was now the major force. The western world merely held sentinel positions in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Indo-China, Malaya and Burma-all three in turmoil-lay beneath the Communist threat...
When U.S. fighters downed a pair of Libyan jets last August, two choruses sounded in counterpoint: "Hooray! We've finally put Viet Nam behind us!" and, from the other side of the stage, "Beware! The Gulf of Sidra may be another Gulf of Tonkin!" (thus the onstage, with clanking chains, the ghost of the 1964 naval skirmish off the coast of Viet Nam, which Lyndon Johnson used as a pretext to escalate American involvement there...
Congress has repeatedly given away its powers to importunate Presidents, then tried to snatch them back. In the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, it told Johnson he could take any action he chose in Southeast Asia; in the War Powers Act of 1973, it told Nixon that he could not use force anywhere without its approval. All congressional efforts to assert executive authority, however, run afoul of the fact that a bicameral legislature of 535 members has difficulty making up its collective mind, particularly in tricky questions of foreign policy. Individually, too, the legislators are often vulnerable to local...
Miller's corral full of voices is spacious enough to accommodate Johnson's personal weaknesses. But the superficial treatment of the Bobby Baker scandal, the relationship between the Johnsons' business interests and the FCC and the Tonkin Gulf deception lets L.B.J. off the hook. Miller also fails to reflect strongly enough the extent of the damage caused by Johnson's Viet Nam policy. Eulogistic gloss tends to soften some of the harder truths. Perhaps this is the nature of oral biography. At one point the author notes that "memory is a gentleman." True. But when memory...
...Hampshire he is a maverick supporting gun control. Some may quibble about Anderson's metamorphosis from "conservative" to "liberal"; but he does not differ from other campaigners for difference's sake. His willingness to state publicly his regret that he voted in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution at a time of swelling militarist sentiment provides evidence that Anderson could resist the often overwhelming temptation to military intervention. Furthermore, his many years of congressional experience offer another vital prerequisite for the office...