Word: vietnamization
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...from the orphanage to instant fame, Pax Thien most likely would have ended up being adopted by another, probably foreign, family, because of the intense overseas demand. "At present, there are more [foreign] requests for adoptions than there are eligible children for adoptions," says Vu Duc Long, head of Vietnam's International Adoption Department, which is part of the Ministry of Justice. "There is more demand than supply." Last year, 163 U.S. parents adopted Vietnamese children, making Vietnam the 14th most popular adoption source. (China is number 1 with more than 6,000 U.S. adoptions in the same period...
...first things you notice when you walk into the Tam Binh orphanage's reception area is a shrine on the back wall with a large, gold-colored bust of Ho Chi Minh, communist Vietnam's founding father, with a golden hammer-and-sickle hung on the wall behind him. But in a corner across from Uncle Ho's bust, there is a more discreet homage: a photo-copy of a Vietnamese magazine spread featuring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt taped to the wall next to one of the office's three wooden desks. The article features photos from the couple...
...Founded 32 years ago (around the time the Vietnam War ended with the communist victory), Tam Binh orphanage has 326 children: 189 boys and 137 girls. Nearly half (47%) are toddlers of the age of Jolie's new son (the orphanage has 153 kids from 19 months to 5 years, of which there are 99 boys and 54 girls...
...Most of the children who grow up in Tam Binh orphanage go straight into the workforce after leaving school, a fact of life the orphanage recognizes. Tam Binh has 10 sewing machines to train teenagers in job skills (garment and shoe factories abound in Vietnam and garments are the country's second-largest-earning export behind crude oil). "Some of them go to work in factories. But some of them have even become teachers." And then Trung says, "Those who are not as clever, they can be street vendors - it's like all others in a society...
Since the Democrats won control of Congress last fall, they've been besieged with warnings against acting too aggressively on Iraq. Such "moves carry clear risks for a party that suffered politically for pushing to end an unpopular war in Vietnam," suggested the Washington Post in January. And now that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pushing to bring the troops home next year, the admonitions will probably grow. Just before the Senate narrowly voted down a Democratic resolution calling for withdrawal in 2008, a G.O.P. staff member crowed that "the public won't go for it." Haven...