Word: viets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...last week's show of force somehow seemed contrived, it was partly by political necessity. In the nuclear age, particularly after Viet Nam, the U.S. is perforce muscle-bound. It may have enough firepower to flatten the globe, yet Presidents are understandably loath to use force except under the most tightly circumscribed conditions. There is public opinion to worry about, as well as Congress and nervous allies, not to mention the Soviet Union. Even the Pentagon, still smarting from Viet Nam, is chary of waging war without unequivocal support...
...some ways Reagan has managed to break the post-Viet Nam syndrome that has paralyzed U.S. foreign policy. Yet he is hardly free of its shadow. With the significant exception of sending the Marines to Beirut on an ill-fated mission 3/ years ago, Reagan has become the master of staging small shows of force, tidy little wars carefully calibrated to win public approval without costing too many American lives...
...assign to you folks the role of pallbearers to democracy in Central America." Such attacks predictably backfired among members of Congress who saw their patriotism impugned. Accusing the Reaganauts of Red baiting, the Democrats used some scare tactics of their own, darkly warning that Nicaragua could become "another Viet Nam." In a passionate speech that climaxed the House debate, Speaker O'Neill revived old nightmares with his declaration, "I see us becoming engaged, step by step, in a military situation that brings our boys directly into the fighting...
Although Michael Dean, 43, never saw combat, he served two tours of duty in Indochina and "was always talking Viet Nam," said a neighbor in Lebanon, N.H. Last week Dean's obsession took a tragic turn. In an apparent murder- suicide pact with Caroline Hull, his lover and the widow of another vet, Dean killed himself, Hull and her three children. "We the veterans, widows and children of veterans are a forgotten group," said a suicide note. Coincidentally, a study just published by the New England Journal of Medicine reports that Viet Nam-era veterans are 86% more likely...
...Nicaragua." He conjured up visions of an inexorable Communist advance: "If we don't want to see the map of Central America covered in a sea of red eventually lapping at our own borders, we must act now." Then he invoked the greatest threat of all in the post-Viet Nam era: "We send money and material now," he warned, "so we'll never have to send our own American boys...