Word: viets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such philosophic fuzziness is shrewd politics. But it suggests that the Democrats have lost the will to define themselves. After the agonizing reappraisals of the Great Society and the divisiveness of Viet Nam, is there a soul to the Democratic Party? Is there a coherent ideology to replace the promise-them-anything, interest-group liberalism that animated the party from F.D.R. to Walter Mondale? Or, after two straight tidal-wave defeats, have the Democrats extinguished their spark in a belated effort to adapt to the Age of Reagan...
...states, hard to dramatize, but for that reason amenable to sustained argument of the sort Dukakis is good at. On the other, emotional issues of the time, Dukakis voted "correctly" for a liberal. After all, in Massachusetts even Republican Governor Sargent signed a law challenging the constitutionality of the Viet Nam War. But Dukakis did not march or protest. He agreed with most of the goals, but did not think "demonstrating" an effective tool. Emotional binges are like staying up all night -- they throw one's schedule off. Vote, if that will do it; argue, if you have...
...military weight around in the world. The principal examples -- what Chinese officials call the Three Obstacles to normalization of relations between the two countries -- are the Soviet Union's deployment of more than 50 divisions along the Chinese northern border, its occupation of Afghanistan and its support for Viet Nam's occupation of Kampuchea. Gorbachev, who is eager to hold a summit with the 83- year-old Deng, has been making, or at least hinting at, concessions on all three issues. Last year the Kremlin removed one division from the Mongolian People's Republic, a Soviet satellite on China...
...most important distinction between Dukakis and Bush is over the rules that should govern America's commitments abroad. Ever since Viet Nam, Democratic Party activists have increasingly been drawn toward neoisolationism, as expressed by George McGovern's exhortation "Come home, America," while Republican activists have tended toward a unilateralist policy, symbolized by Reagan's call for America to "stand tall." Dukakis takes a third approach: he calls himself a "multilateralist." In other words, he portrays himself as part of the once dominant bipartisan consensus that favored asserting American influence through alliances, treaty organizations, economic partnerships and the United Nations...
...withdraw its troops completely by 1990, and last week's ceremony marked the departure of the top commanders. In a striking statistical footnote, Vietnamese officials admitted last week that they had lost 50,000 soldiers in Kampuchea since the 1978 invasion -- roughly the same number of Americans killed in Viet...