Word: vietnames
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unfortunately, the drawbacks of a peacetime draft outweigh its benefits. Nearly a million young men have failed to register. Some may sign up now that Reagan has promised Justice Department prosecutions, but the experience of Vietnam shows that conscription would make criminals out of hundreds of thousands of the nation's youth. If the government attempted to hunt down and jail that many people, it would transform the country into nothing less than a police state. The late Sixties and early Seventies also taught that the draft is used as a means of suppressing domestic dissent. There are many...
...SOME WAYS they were the glory years of the left, of Democrats, of liberals. Thousands--hundreds of thousands--marched at a time. Millions came to care passionately for a cause; a majority of this nation was convinced that the war in Vietnam was a disgrace. But, and it is the but that haunts American progressives--the anti-war movement was ultimately a failure. Even after it reached immense proportions, it failed to end the war for years; more bombs were dropped after the emergence of the New Left than during any war in history. And worse, though the national mood...
...movement larger and deeper than the one that challenged Vietnam must be built. Probably it is an impossible goal, at least for this country in the nasty years left in this century. But we must try. If it is to mean somthing-if it is to save our souls and substantially change the world-then this movement must be larger than a single case, it must be capable of applying the lessons of a Vietnam to a world full of people with the same yearnings and rights. But it needs to be grounded in a specific example, needs...
PERFECT BECAUSE Latin America really is strategically important. If we succeed, through prolonged and ultimately futile resistance, in driving the region into the arms of Moscow (see "Cuba, Revolution," "Vietnam, Civil War," and "Nicaragua, Rebellion"), we will have lost not only the moral battle but the potential friendship of an important neigh-boring area. Withdrawal of U.S. support will guarantee a popular victory; disinterested and genuine American support for the regime established in the wake of revolution will help assure not only that these nations develop democratically, but that they reject the obligation-laden entreaties of the Russians...
...change in people. Some method to galvanize Americans, to melt down our passions and prejudices, remove our impurities, and re-shape us as caring men and women. First there must be something to challenge people's assurances that all is right with our country and our world. Vietnam did that on a massive scale, but what Vietnam produced was confusion, alienating people from an evil government but not replacing government policies with anything really different. We don't need confusion, though it is an intermediate step, but a new clarity, a new and hundredfold more energetic vision...