This book is the first extensive research on the role of poetry during the Iranian Revolution (1979) and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). How can poetry, especially peaceful medieval Sufi poems, be applied to exalt violence, to present death as martyrdom, and to process war traumas? Examining poetry by both Islamic revolutionary and established dissident poets, it demonstrates how poetry spurs people to action, even leading them to sacrifice their lives. The book's originality lies in fresh analyses of how themes such as martyrdom and violence, and mystical themes such as love and wine, are integrated in a vehemently political context, while showing how Shiite ritual such as the pilgrimage to Mecca clash with Saudi Wahhabi appreciations. A distinguishing quality of the book is its examination of how martyrdom was instilled in the minds of Iranians through poetry, employing Sufi themes, motifs and doctrines to justify death. Such inculcation proved effective in mobilising people to the front, ready to sacrifice their lives. As such, the book is a must for readers interested in Iranian culture and history, in Sufi poetry, in martyrdom and war poetry. Those involved with Middle Eastern Studies, Iranian Studies, Literary Studies, Political Philosophy and Religious Studies will benefit from this book. "From his own memories and expert research, the author gives us a ravishing account of 'a poetry stained with blood, violence and death'. His brilliantly layered analysis of modern Persian poetry shows how it integrates political and religious ideology and motivational propaganda with age-old mystical themes for the most traumatic of times for Iran." (Alan Williams, Research Professor of Iranian Studies, University of Manchester) "When Asghar Seyed Gohrab, a highly prolific academician, publishes a new book, you can be certain he has paid attention to an exciting and largely unexplored subject. Martyrdom, Mysticism and Dissent: The Poetry of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) is no exception in the sense that he combines a few different cultural, religious, mystic, and political aspects of Iranian life to present a vivid picture and thorough analysis of the development and effect of what became known as the revolutionary poetry of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This time, he has even enriched his narrative by inserting his voice into his analysis. It is a thoughtful book and a fantastic read." (Professor Kamran Talattof, University of Arizona)

For those with a vivid memory of the Vietnam war, there is consolation in knowing that the impact of that war altered and shaped politics and warfare for the next generations. But in that altering we must take the lessons and apply them to new situations, new challenges and new policy dilemmas. To fail to do so would mean that the warriors at Khe Sanh and all of Vietnam were truly expendable, The battle of Khe Sanh was won and the Vietnam war was lost at the same time. Expendable Warriors describes at multiple levels the soldiers and marines who were expendable in the American political chaos of Vietnam, 1968. On January 21, 1968, nine days before the Tet offensive, tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars began the attacks on the Khe Sanh plateau, which led to the siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Gen. Westmoreland was fully aware that the North Vietnamese would attack but he declined to alert or warn the small unit of American soldiers and marines serving at Khe Sanh in an advisory capacity, considering them expendable in the greater strategy. Not just an analysis of the battle, Expendable Warriors also ponders the question of how to win an unpopular war on foreign soil, linking battlefield events to political reality.

This reference work is an ideal resource for anyone interested in better understanding the controversial Iraq War. It treats the war in its entirety, covering politics, religion, and history, as well as military issues. The Iraq War started in 2003 in a quest to rid the nation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that were never found. It lasted over 8 years, during which more than 30,000 U.S. service members were wounded and almost 4,500 American lives lost. Comprised of some 275 entries, this comprehensive encyclopedia examines the war from multiple points of view. Each article is written by an expert with specialized knowledge of the topic. The reference covers every aspect of the Iraq War, from the U.S. invasion (Operation IRAQI FREEDOM) through the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the surge, and the U.S. withdrawal. Other significant aspects of the conflict are addressed as well, including Abu Ghraib, WMDs, the controversial use of private military contractors, and Britain's role in the war. The book also features an overview essay, a "causes and consequences" essay, maps, photos, a chronology, and a bibliography.

The book starts out picturing a young man who foolishly wants to go to war where he in vision's himself receiving all these high class medals for heroism but never once taking into account what it is going to take physically and mentally to get those medals. He's constantly playing a head game within himself and those that surround him. He like so many other young men of past eras are trying to be something that they're not and that small initial lie grows into a tremendous reputation that he has to live with and soon regrets that he's known by such. Come walk with the author and his brothers of the sword through the dark, humid, unforgiving jungles of Vietnam and experience the death, destruction, and mental sacrificial anguish they had to endure. Come see why you fear being alone in the denseness of a jungle or a forest that you have never entered before. Feel the heat of the Asian jungle floor intermixed with the leaches, ants, mosquitoes, snakes and humans searching you out only to destroy you at any cost. You see our author starts out innocently enough but soon finds out that war is not only a physical hardship demanding its pounds of flesh, but also is a horrendous mental agonizing hazard from which there is only one means of escape and/or retreat. That means to an end is death. Yes the author and his brothers of the sword will take their heroic missions and sacrificial allegiances to the grave with them. But, the real tragedy of it all is no one really cares about them in the first place. For they were and still are the "Secret Soldiers of the Second Army" willing to go anywhere, any time, to do the impossible for the ungrateful.

VIETNAM SUMMARY 2003 MESSAGE The soldier is a warrior and must live by a code. A sentry for America who stands between slavery and freedom for his family and love ones. Soldiers kill people and soldiers get killed. They die for their country. In reality they fight for each other. They train day and night for months and years. Soldiers honor, serve and obey America and hold her above all others. Can I rationalize a war where 60% to 70% of the casualties were civilians? Did those children, women and old people have too die? Why? There is no glamour or honor in war. "I love thee dear so much love I not honor more " Open the gates and fools rush in- "Once a Fool. " America the beautiful from sea to shining sea. The movies make war look so glorious and when your first friend is killed you know it was all a lie. After you get over the initial shock, you're torn between elation and guilt. Elation because it wasn't you who was killed and guilt for even thinking that way. All any man wants is to leave this world with a little dignity, believing that some how he made a difference. Just maybe this is a better place because he was a visitor here for a brief period. He hopes to be remembered for the good deeds and forgotten for the embarrassing moments when expectations were not met. However, one is remembered as a whole being, good and bad. You come into this world in less than a spectacular way, more often through pain. No clothes, crying, smacked on the bottom, complaining and very helpless. Many of us leave this world in the same way, minus the smacked bottom. A few Americans refused service induction and paid a price. Other Americans went to Vietnam and paid a greater price. Did over 58,000 Americans have too die in Vietnam? We who made it home must speak for them by making a contribution, a difference. I became a school teacher to affect the way young people think. If we are to survive, our leaders can not make the same historical mistakes. I hope the Vietnam people will someday forgive me. If I am to turn the page of my life and live; I must forgive all those who have trespassed against me. There will be a time when I can forgive the United States Government from President Kennedy to Henry Kissinger for sending American soldiers to Vietnam. Yes, I am over fifty now, I must forgive and forget the Vietnam experience so I can move on with my life. A soldier should not feel sorry for himself. No one cares; he is alone in his world. Soldiers were in Vietnam completing service obligations while their friends were getting married and finishing college. People in the United States were moving on with their lives. Many soldiers came home sick and or wounded to a hostile environment and difficult times. As they healed, trying to adjust to civilian life, the student demonstrations and war protest continued. There were few job offers, only cries of baby killers and war losers. Today, many Vietnam soldiers are here in body but they never made it back. Everyone who served in that war died a little and if you weren't there you will never understand. The country has changed forever. Hopefully, we have all changed for the better. We as a people will never be the same again. There will be a time I can forgive everyone and forgive myself so I can come to closure, but not today.

This book is about the unseen Shadow War that occurred between 1968 and 1976. It was written to honor those who served our country and didn't come back. They may have been ignored or denied by the "Powers That Be," but they will live in my heart and my nightmares as long as I live. The profits from the sale of this book will go to help homeless veterans. Reading this book will open a new world for you -- The world of Special Intelligence Operations. From Viet Nam to Cambodia to Laos and North Viet Nam the action will show you why so many veterans from the Viet Nam War have PTSD. The potential for recurring nightmares will be apparent. Next you will take a trip from Libya to Spain to Italy and Romania. You will find out that the war against terror did not start in 2001. The following exert will demonstrate what Inside the World of Mirrors is all about. In 1974, I met and was briefed by a "Mr. Martin," a high level individual from the American Embassy in Rome, Italy, on an operation to insure that a particular individual would not continue funding communist political activities in Italy. He was a bag man for the KGB. It was less than two months until a very important election was to take place. He was spreading money around to help the communist political candidates get elected. I was simply told "Make Him Stop" They gave me carte blanche to get it done. Anytime in the next seven days would be just fine. This was only one of the 83 missions ran by a Special Intelligence Operative code named the Iceman

This book celebrates the achievements in Viet Nam of the US Special Forces soldiers, popularly known as "The Green Berets." These are America's finest warriors, our elite force who fuse military and civil skills in a new form of victorious warfare. This book focuses on Viet Nam during 1968 and 1969, the two most crucial years of that conflict. The Berets learned many lessons in Viet Nam. Not only are these historically interesting, but they are the keys to success in our Global War on Terrorism. The first lesson emphasizes the proper advisory relationships that must exist when our American military train and work with the military of other coalition nations. The second lesson stresses the need for the integration of the military and civilian sides of any war. Little is accomplished if bloody battles only result in producing more enemy. Rather our strategies must combine appropriate military measures with psychological operations and civic actions that win over nonaligned groups, and attract even hostile forces. The third lesson demands mutual and unwavering loyalty between America's forces and those they train and advise. An enemy has no greater weapon than to boast that Americans will eventually grow weary and desert their friends while the enemy will always endure. The fourth lesson calls for our American military to know how to work with others, not merely in spite of differences, but actually appreciating and building upon this diversity of races, religions, cultures, political views, and tribal backgrounds. I am positive that the reader will find many more lessons from the accomplishments of the Green Berets related in this book.

In the decades since the "forgotten war" in Korea, conventional wisdom has held that the Eighth Army consisted largely of poorly trained, undisciplined troops who fled in terror from the onslaught of the Communist forces. Now, military historian Thomas E. Hanson argues that the generalizations historians and fellow soldiers have used regarding these troops do little justice to the tens of thousands of soldiers who worked to make themselves and their army ready for war.
In Hanson's careful study of combat preparedness in the Eighth Army from 1949 to the outbreak of hostilities in 1950, he concedes that the U.S. soldiers sent to Korea suffered gaps in their professional preparation, from missing and broken equipment to unevenly trained leaders at every level of command. But after a year of progressive, focused, and developmental collective training--based largely on the lessons of combat in World War II--these soldiers expected to defeat the Communist enemy.
By recognizing the constraints under which the Eighth Army operated, Hanson asserts that scholars and soldiers will be able to discard what Douglas Macarthur called the "pernicious myth" of the Eighth Army's professional, physical, and moral ineffectiveness.

Following the myths and legends about Nazis recruited by the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, Eric Meyer's new book is based on the real story of one such former Waffen-SS man who lived to tell the tale. The Legion recruited widely from soldiers left unemployed and homeless by the defeat of Germany in 1945. They offered a new identity and passport to men who could bring their fighting abilities to the jungles and rice paddies of what was to become vietnam. These were ruthless, trained killers, brutalised by the war on the Eastern Front, their killing skills honed to a razor's edge. They found their true home in Indochina, where they fought and became a byword for brutal military efficiency.

Philip D. Beidler, who served as an armored cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam, sees less and less of the hard-won perspective of the common soldier in what America has made of that war. Each passing year, he says, dulls our sense of immediacy about Vietnam's costs, opening wider the temptation to make it something more necessary, neatly contained, and justifiable than it should ever become. Here Beidler draws on deeply personal memories to reflect on the war's lingering aftereffects and the shallow, evasive ways we deal with them. Beidler brings back the war he knew in chapters on its vocabulary, music, literature, and film. His catalog of soldier slang reveals how finely a tour of Vietnam could hone one's sense of absurdity. His survey of the war's pop hits looks for meaning in the soundtrack many veterans still hear in their heads. Beidler also explains how ""Viet Pulp"" literature about snipers, tunnel rats, and other hard-core types has pushed aside masterpieces like Duong Thu Huong's Novel without a Name. Likewise we learn why the movie The Deer Hunter doesn't ""get it"" about Vietnam but why Platoon and We Were Soldiers sometimes nearly do. As Beidler takes measure of his own wartime politics and morals, he ponders the divergent careers of such figures as William Calley, the army lieutenant whose name is synonymous with the civilian massacre at My Lai, and an old friend, poet John Balaban, a conscientious objector who performed alternative duty in Vietnam as a schoolteacher and hospital worker. Beidler also looks at Vietnam alongside other conflicts--including the war on international terrorism. He once hoped, he says, that Vietnam had fractured our sense of providential destiny and geopolitical invincibility but now realizes, with dismay, that those myths are still with us. ""Americans have always wanted their apocalypses,"" writes Beidler, ""and they have always wanted them now.

Winner of the Blogger's Book Prize, 2021 Shortlisted for the People's Book Prize, 2021 Winner of Best Literary Fiction and Best Multicultural Fiction at American Book Fest International Book Awards, 2021 'An epic account of Viet Nam's painful 20th-century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling... Moving and riveting.' Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer Selected as a Best Book of 2020 by NB Magazine * BookBrowse * Buzz Magazine * NPR * Washington Independent Review of Books * Real Simple * She Reads * A Hindu's View * Thoughts from a Page One family, two generations of women and a war that will change their lives forever Ha Noi, 1972. Huong and her grandmother, Tran Dieu Lan, cling to one another in their improvised shelter as American bombs fall around them. For Tran Dieu Lan, forced to flee the family farm with her six children decades earlier as the Communist government rose to power in the North, this experience is horribly familiar. Seen through the eyes of these two unforgettable women, The Mountains Sing captures their defiance and determination, hope and unexpected joy. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen's richly lyrical debut weaves between the lives of a grandmother and granddaughter to paint a unique picture of a country pushed to breaking point, and a family who refuse to give up. 'Devastating... From the French and Japanese occupations to the Indochina wars, The Great Hunger, land reform and the Vietnam War, it's a story of resilience, determination, family and hope in a country blighted by pain.' Refinery29

What is Leadership? Dr. Richard Berry presents a thought-provoking depiction of current leadership theories as myths because of the effort to exclude or conceal the meaning and value of emotion. This would suggest that current leadership theory is incomplete due not only to the absence of emotions but independent thought and intuition as well. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West-a husband, father of two, and a military officer with an impeccable service record including a previous award for valor-had his military career ended prematurely when he undertook extraordinary measures to protect the lives of his men. He was serving in Tikrit, Iraq, the home of the late Sadaam Hussein and dead center of what we all know today as the Sunni Triangle. He was not wounded, killed in action, or taken prisoner, but instead charged with felony offenses by the United States Army for mistreating an Iraqi detainee, who was believed to have information that was going to kill American soldiers. This book documents what the effects of leadership can be when the power of the human spirit is allowed to flourish at the individual, group and organizational levels.

Reprint of 1982 book from the US Army Center of Military History. An account of Army helicopter ambulances in Vietnam that evaluates leadership, procedures, and logistical support.

Behind-enemy-lines stories of elite Marines in Vietnam Force Recon companies were the eyes and ears of the Marine Corps in Vietnam. Classified as special operations capable, Force Recon Marines ventured into the enemy's backyard to conduct reconnaissance and launched deliberate strikes against the enemy. Lanning and Stubbe blend analysis and you-are-there stories of Force Recon in action to create the definitive account of Recon Marines.

A history of Japan, this work draws on a range of Japanese sources to offer an analysis of how shattering defeat in World War II, followed by over six years of military occupation by the USA, affected every level of Japanese society - in ways that neither the victor nor the vanquished could anticipate. Here is the history of an extraordinary moment in the history of Japanese culture, when new values warred with old, and when early ideals of "peace and democracy" were soon challenged by the "reverse course" decision to incorporate Japan into the Cold War Pax Americana. The work chronicles not only the material and psychological impact of utter defeat but also the early emergence of dynamic countercultures that gave primacy to the private as opposed to public spheres - in short, a liberation from totalitarian wartime control. John Dower shows how the tangled legacies of this intense, turbulent and unprecedented interplay of conqueror and conquered, West and East, wrought the utterly foreign and strangely familiar Japan of today.