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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900
"Fulbright was erudite and eloquent in all the books he wrote, but
this one is his masterpiece. Within its pages lie his now historic
remonstrations against a great nation's overreach, his powerful
argument for dissent, and his thoughtful propositions for a new way
forward . . . lessons and cautions that resonate just as strongly
today." - From the foreword by Bill Clinton J. William Fulbright
(1905-1995), a Rhodes scholar and lawyer, began his long career in
public service when he was elected to serve Arkansas's Third
District in Congress in 1942. He quickly became a prominent member
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he introduced the
Fulbright Resolution calling for participation in an organization
that became the United Nations. Elected to the Senate in 1944, he
promoted the passage of legislation establishing the Fulbright
exchange program, and he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee from 1959 to 1974, longer than any senator in
American history. Fulbright drew on his extensive experience in
international relations to write The Arrogance of Power, a sweeping
critique of American foreign policy, in particular the
justification for the Vietnam War, Congress's failure to set limits
on it, and the impulses that gave rise to it. The book-with its
solid underpinning the idea that "the most valuable public servant,
like the true patriot, is one who gives a higher loyalty to his
country's ideals than to its current policy"-was published in 1966
and sold 400,000 copies. The New York Times called it "an
invaluable antidote to the official rhetoric of government."
Enhanced by a new forward by President Bill Clinton, this eloquent
treatise will resonate with today's readers pondering, as Francis
O. Wilcox wrote in the original preface, the peril of nations whose
leaders lack ""the wisdom and the good judgment to use their power
wisely and well.
Finalist for the 1971 National Book Award
In early 1968, Communist forces in Vietnam launched a surprise
offensive that targeted nearly every city, town, and major military
base throughout South Vietnam. For several hours, the U.S. embassy
in Saigon itself came under siege by Viet Cong soldiers.
Militarily, the offensive was a failure, as the North Vietnamese
Army and its guerrilla allies in the south suffered devastating
losses. Politically, however, it proved to be a crucial turning
point in America's involvement in Southeast Asia and public opinion
of the war. In this classic work of military history and war
reportage--long considered the definitive history of Tet and its
aftermath--Don Oberdorfer moves back and forth between the war and
the home front to document the lasting importance of this military
action. Based on his own observations as a correspondent for the
"Washington Post" and interviews with hundreds of people who were
caught up in the struggle, "Tet " remains an essential contribution
to our understanding of the Vietnam War.
With the planned withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan,
the longest conflicts in our nation's history were supposed to end.
Yet we remain at war against expanding terrorist movements, and our
security forces have had to continually adapt to a nihilistic foe
that operates in the shadows.The result of fifteen years of
reporting, Twilight Warriors is the untold story of the tight-knit
brotherhood that changed the way America fights. James Kitfield
reveals how brilliant innovators in the US military, Special
Forces, and the intelligence and law enforcement communities forged
close operational bonds in the crucibles of Iraq and Afghanistan,
breaking down institutional barriers to create a relentless,
intelligence-driven style of operations. At the forefront of this
profound shift were Stanley McChrystal and his interagency team at
Joint Special Operations Command, the pioneers behind a hybrid
method of warfighting: find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze.
Other key figures include Michael Flynn, the visionary who
redefined the intelligence gathering mission the FBI's Brian
McCauley, who used serial-killer profilers to track suicide bombers
in Afghanistan and the Delta Force commander Scott Miller,
responsible for making team players out of the US military's most
elite and secretive counterterrorism units. The result of their
collaborations is a globe-spanning network that is elegant in its
simplicity and terrifying in its lethality. As Kitfield argues,
this style of operations represents our best hope for defending the
nation in an age of asymmetric warfare. Twilight Warriors is an
unprecedented account of the American way of war,and the
iconoclasts who have brought it into the twenty-first century.
Efforts to understand the impact of the Vietnam War on America
began soon after it ended, and they continue to the present day. In
"After Vietnam" four distinguished scholars focus on different
elements of the war's legacy, while one of the major architects of
the conflict, former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara,
contributes a final chapter pondering foreign policy issues of the
twenty-first century.
In the book's opening chapter, Charles E. Neu explains how the
Vietnam War changed Americans' sense of themselves: challenging
widely-held national myths, the war brought frustration,
disillusionment, and a weakening of Americans' sense of their past
and vision for the future. Brian Balogh argues that Vietnam became
such a powerful metaphor for turmoil and decline that it obscured
other forces that brought about fundamental changes in government
and society. George C. Herring examines the postwar American
military, which became nearly obsessed with preventing "another
Vietnam." Robert K. Brigham explores the effects of the war on the
Vietnamese, as aging revolutionary leaders relied on appeals to
"revolutionary heroism" to justify the communist party's monopoly
on political power. Finally, Robert S. McNamara, aware of the
magnitude of his errors and burdened by the war's destructiveness,
draws lessons from his experience with the aim of preventing wars
in the future.
This concluding volume of The Vietnam War and International Law
focuses on the last stages of America's combat role in Indochina.
The articles in the first section deal with general aspects of the
relationship of international law to the Indochina War. Sections II
and III are concerned with the adequacy of the laws of war under
modern conditions of combat, and with related questions of
individual responsibility for the violation of such laws. Section
IV deals with some of the procedural issues related to the
negotiated settlement of the war. The materials in Section V seek
to reappraise the relationship between the constitutional structure
of the United States and the way in which the war was conducted,
while the final section presents the major documents pertaining to
the end of American combat involvement in Indochina. A supplement
takes account of the surrender of South Vietnam in spring 1975.
Contributors to the volume--lawyers, scholars, and government
officials--include Dean Rusk, Eugene V. Rostow, Richard A. Falk,
John Norton Moore, and Richard Wasserstrom. Originally published in
1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These editions preserve the original texts of these important books
while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.
The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase
access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of
books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in
1905.
Issues of the war that have provoked public controversy and legal
debate over the last two years--the Cambodian invasion of May-June
1970, the disclosure in November 1969 of the My Lai massacre, and
the question of war crimes--are the focus of Volume 3. As in the
previous volumes, the Civil War Panel of the American Society of
International Law has endeavored to select the most significant
legal writing on the subject and to provide, to the extent
possible, a balanced presentation of opposing points of view. Parts
I and II deal directly with the Cambodian, My Lai, and war crimes
debates. Related questions are treated in the rest of the volume:
constitutional debate on the war; the distribution of functions
among coordinate branches of the government; the legal status of
the insurgent regime in the struggle for control of South Vietnam;
prospects for settlement without a clear-cut victory; and Vietnam's
role in general world order. The articles reflect the views of some
forty contributors: among them, Jean Lacouture, Henry Kissinger,
John Norton Moore, Quincy Wright, William H. Rhenquist, and Richard
A. Falk. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library
uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available
previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of
Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original
texts of these important books while presenting them in durable
paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy
Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage
found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University
Press since its founding in 1905.
This concluding volume of The Vietnam War and International Law
focuses on the last stages of America's combat role in Indochina.
The articles in the first section deal with general aspects of the
relationship of international law to the Indochina War. Sections II
and III are concerned with the adequacy of the laws of war under
modern conditions of combat, and with related questions of
individual responsibility for the violation of such laws. Section
IV deals with some of the procedural issues related to the
negotiated settlement of the war. The materials in Section V seek
to reappraise the relationship between the constitutional structure
of the United States and the way in which the war was conducted,
while the final section presents the major documents pertaining to
the end of American combat involvement in Indochina. A supplement
takes account of the surrender of South Vietnam in spring 1975.
Contributors to the volume--lawyers, scholars, and government
officials--include Dean Rusk, Eugene V. Rostow, Richard A. Falk,
John Norton Moore, and Richard Wasserstrom. Originally published in
1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These editions preserve the original texts of these important books
while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.
The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase
access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of
books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in
1905.
In the tradition of his Silent Night and Pearl Harbor Christmas ,
historian Stanley Weintraub presents another gripping narrative of
a wartime Christmas season- the epic story of the 1950 holiday
season in Korea, when American troops faced extreme cold, a
determined enemy, and long odds. A Military Book Club main
selection
Under the blazing Iraqi sun in the summer of 2007, Shannon Meehan,
a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, ordered a strike that would take the
lives of innocent Iraqi civilians. He thought he was doing the
right thing. He thought he was protecting his men. He thought that
he would only kill the enemy, but in the ruins of the strike, he
discovers his mistake and uncovers a tragedy.
For most of his deployment in Iraq, Lt. Meehan felt that he had
been made for a life in the military. A tank commander, he worked
in the violent Diyala Province, successfully fighting the
insurgency by various Sunni and Shia factions. He was celebrated by
his senior officers and decorated with medals. But when the U.S.
surge to retake Iraq in 2006 and 2007 finally pushed into Baqubah,
a town virtually entirely controlled by al Qaida, Meehan would make
the decision that would change his life. This is the true story of
one soldier's attempt to reconcile what he has done with what he
felt he had to do. Stark and devastating, it recounts first-hand
the reality of a new type of warfare that remains largely unspoken
and forgotten on the frontlines of Iraq.
The Vietnam War tells the story of one of the most divisive episodes in modern American history through primary sources, ranging from government documents, news reports, speeches, popular songs to memoirs, writings by Vietnam veterans (including coauthor John Fitzgerald), and poetry by Vietnamese and Americans on matching themes. The book begins in the 19th century when Vietnam became a French colony, and traces the insidious route by which the United States became involved in a war on the other side of the world.
Owen W. Gilman Jr. stresses the US experience of war in the
twenty-first century and argues that wherever and whenever there is
war, there will be imaginative responses to it, especially the
recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the trauma of September
11, the experience of Americans at war has been rendered honestly
and fully in a wide range of texts--creative nonfiction and
journalism, film, poetry, and fiction. These responses, Gilman
contends, have packed a lot of power and measure up even to World
War II's literature and film. Like few other books, Gilman's volume
studies these new texts-- among them Kevin Powers's debut novel The
Yellow Birds and Phil Klay's short stories Redeployment, along with
the films The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, and Billy Lynn's Long
Halftime Walk. For perspective, Gilman also looks at some
touchstones from the Vietnam War. Compared to a few of the big
Vietnam books and films, this new material has mostly been read and
watched by small audiences and generated less discussion. Gilman
exposes the circumstances in American culture currently preventing
literature and film of our recent wars from making a significant
impact. He contends that Americans' inclination to demand
distraction limits learning from these compelling responses to war
in the past decade. According to Gilman, where there should be
clarity and depth of knowledge, we instead face misunderstanding
and the anguish endured by veterans betrayed by war and our lack of
understanding.
Brian Keenan went to Beirut in 1985 for a change of scene from his native Belfast. He became headline news when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi’ite militiamen and held in the suburbs of Beirut for the next four and a half years. For much of that time he was shut off from all news and contact with anyone other than his jailers and, later, his fellow hostages, amongst them John McCarthy.
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