Rated PG, directed by Randall Wallace, with Mel Gibson, (Lt. Colonel Hal Moore), Madeleine Stowe (Julia Moore), Greg Kinnear (Major Bruce "Snakeshit" Crandall), Sam Elliot Sgt. Major Basil Plumley), Chris Klein (2nd Lt. Jack Geoghegan), running time: 120 minutes.
Mel Gibson leads a crew of ``fathers, brothers, husbands and sons'' on the US' 1965 offensive in Vietnam's Ia Drang. Some 400 US troops are pitted against over 2000 Vietnamese in what is quickly recognized as a hopeless situation for the Americans. As in Black Hawk Down, the happy Hollywood ending here is not in winning the battle, but in ``getting all our boys out.'' Wallace, a veteran of lose-the-battle, win-the-war films after Pearl Harbor, tones down the melodrama in Soldiers, but genuine human emotion is lost to the whiz-bang of bullets. Equally emotionally-vacuous are the scenes that take place with the wives and kids back in an all-too-perfect America.
PHOTO: MATA
One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal. Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
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