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The U.S. fared little better in its long battle against terrorism. After the Administration launched an air raid on Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in April, the masked face of terrorism was mostly absent from the world's airports and alleyways. Five months later, though, the threat was back with a bloody vengeance. Bombs erupted in downtown Paris, men with machine guns stormed a synagogue in Istanbul, four Palestinian hijackers held a Pan American plane hostage for 18 hours in Karachi, and 17 more foreigners were kidnaped in Lebanon. Many leaders looked to another kind of pressure -- that of economic sanctions -- to push the white-dominated government in South Africa toward reform. But neither trade embargoes nor the pullout of Western firms seemed likely to douse the flames of racial violence. Indeed, last week the unrest continued, with sporadic clashes with government forces, protests against a state of emergency and "black Christmas" boycotts.
The shadows cast by other menacing forces also lengthened in 1986. The disease known as AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) claimed its 16,128th American life and left millions more rethinking their private lives. The epidemic of drugs became more sobering than ever, as the young turned to an addictive and unusually noxious boiled-down form of cocaine known as crack. One atomic nightmare came true and others were awakened when a Soviet atomic power reactor at Chernobyl, 80 miles north of Kiev, exploded and then kept burning for several days, a man-made disaster that could cause as many as 5,000 premature deaths by radiation-induced cancer. It was history's worst nuclear accident.
The abuse of technology also sabotaged one of the last vestiges of heaven- bent idealism -- the American space program -- when the space shuttle Challenger turned into a fireball only 73 seconds after takeoff. While millions watched on television, the craft and its seven passengers, including Schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, disappeared in a sad trail of smoke. The tragedy only deepened when a presidential commission found that the accident had been caused by bureaucratic mismanagement and neglect.
None of these events, though, were quite so startling, let alone uplifting, as Aquino's almost cheerful revolution. And if the first woman President of the Philippines was the happiest symbol in a year of symbols, she was also the most human. She showed how one individual could inspire in others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself and changed a country's history. She brought not only a new face into politics, but also a new way of thinking about politics and the virtues it demands. The victory of "People Power" made no dents in the larger issues that tower like Stonehenge sentinels over the planet. It has not shifted the superpower equation nor reduced the threat of nuclear war. But it has, perhaps, affected the people who affect the issues.