Word: nam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Reagan took office after a long, depressive streak of American history that began with the assassination of John Kennedy and proceeded through the riots and other assassinations of the 1960s, the Viet Nam War, Watergate, Nixon's resignation, the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian hostage crisis. Jimmy Carter was apparently overwhelmed by the presidency. The Club of Rome's Spenglerian predictions about the earth's shrinking resources shadowed the '70s, and Carter at last announced that there was a malaise in the land. The drift was bleak: things would get worse and worse and never get better again. Reagan...
...once a placid pond where Western powers could splash contentedly, encircled by a ring of friendly nations. The Philippines were American. Viet Nam (Indochina then) was French. Singapore was British. Indonesia belonged to the Netherlands. Then, after World War II, the slow move toward regional independence began. Today many of the small countries that dot the Pacific are fiercely nationalistic. Yet, at least for now, most of them remain closely allied with the West...
...million contract was a small new firm based in Washington named UXB International. (UXB, which stands for "unexploded bomb," was in the title of a BBC and PBS television series.) The company was set up by a former Navy lieutenant, Phillip Hough, who served two tours in Viet Nam as an explosive-ordnance specialist...
...peoples. This may result from the fact that Americans tend, still, to hold a Ptolemaic rather than a Copernican view of their place in the universe. Whatever America is, best or worst, it is at the center of things. At the moment, after the long self-lacerations of Viet Nam, Watergate and the rest, Americans in the Reagan era seem in the mood for assertive self-celebration...
...discourage guerrilla raids by Khmer resistance fighters based in Thailand, the Viet Nam-backed Kampuchean government is continuing to work at sealing off the border with Thailand by building walls and ditches reinforced with barbed wire and mines. But even if the huge project is completed, it will be almost impossible for the Kampucheans to close the entire 300-mile frontier...