Even before the last U. S. combat troops departed from Vietnam, Americans were struggling to learn from the longest and most divisive war in which their nation had been engaged. From that time forward, Vietnam has been at the center of every foreign policy debate. The very word "Vietnam" has become "an emotive," Michael Howard has written, "a term for this generation as "Munich" or "Pearl Harbor" was for the last." From the Angolan crisis of 1975 to the Persian Gulf crisis of 1987 and especially on the question of U.S. intervention in Central America, analogies have repeatedly been drawn with Vietnam. The word has evoked powerful and often contradictory images, and the lessons drawn have dictated answers to the most pressing questions. Such is the perceived power of that short, three-syllable word that when the United States first intervened in the Persian Gulf in 1987 the speaker of the Iranian parliament warned ominously of another Vietnam, obviously feeling that this was the best way to intimidate America from interfering.