US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

SAVANNAH, Ga., June 15 — The yellow ribbons, now frayed and faded, are still wrapped around the oak trees near the Hunter Army Air Field here where horn-honking, flag-waving crowds lined the streets in the early morning hours last March to greet the first troops returning from the Persian Gulf war.

But here as elsewhere, the war seems like something from another era these days, and the talk is of other things: the sluggish economy, the dreary stretch of empty buildings on Broughton Street downtown, the record-breaking local murder rate.

A year after it began in fear and ambiguity and ended in relief and jubilation, the Persian Gulf war has receded to a degree that few people expected, replaced by fears about the economy and doubts about the country's ability to handle problems at home as easily as it dispatched Saddam Hussein's overmatched military forces.

At the Raytheon plant in Andover, Mass., where the Patriot missiles that helped decide the war are manufactured, the talk is of possible layoffs....

—Peter Applebomes, "Year After Gulf War, Joy is a Ghost", The New York Times, January 16, 1992, opening grafs

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.