This book recounts the experiences of a young US Marine officer during the Vietnam War as he fights that war over a nineteen month period in three different geographical areas of South Vietnam. He graphically explains to the reader what it was like to perform three distinct combat missions: long-range ground reconnaissance in the Annamite Mountains of I Corps, infantry operations in the rice paddies and mountains of Quang Nam Province, and special police operations for the CIA in Tay Ninh Province. The author describes in rich detail each of these distinct military activities and provides powerful and explicit examples of each. Using primary sources, such has US Marine Corps official unit histories, CIA documents, and his weekly letters home to his parents, the author relies almost exclusively on primary sources to convey to the reader a story that is devoid of hyperbole and focused on providing an accurate and honest account of combat at the small unit level. Of particular interest to students of the war is his description of his assignment to the CIA as a Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) advisor in Tay Ninh Province, where he participated in several secret missions as part of the controversial Phoenix Program. He also reveals the name and contribution of the CIA's most valuable spy during the war, the famous "Tay Ninh Source".

Isolated Command Post Keating - one of the most vulnerable US army bases in Afghanistan. Located at the bottom of a deep valley, soliders are exposed. The Taliban can see every move and attack is imminent. Outnumbered Just before sunrise on 3 October 2009, hundreds of Taliban insurgents open fire from all angles. Red Platoon and the Black Knight Troop are pinned down. They hear the message over the radio: Enemy in the Wire. The Taliban are inside the camp. But never outgunned. This is the heart-stopping, awe-inspiring true story of the platoon's brutal struggle for survival, told by the man who fought to defend his men, and who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary bravery.

After the swift defeat of the Taliban in 2001, American optimism has steadily evaporated in the face of mounting violence; a new "war of a thousand cuts" has now brought the country to its knees. In the Graveyard of Empires is a political history of Afghanistan in the "Age of Terror" from 2001 to 2009, exploring the fundamental tragedy of America's longest war since Vietnam. After a brief survey of the great empires in Afghanistan-the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the British in the era of Kipling, and the late Soviet Union-Seth G. Jones examines the central question of our own war: how did an insurgency develop? Following the September 11 attacks, the United States successfully overthrew the Taliban regime. It established security throughout the country-killing, capturing, or scattering most of al Qa'ida's senior operatives-and Afghanistan finally began to emerge from more than two decades of struggle and conflict. But Jones argues that as early as 2001 planning for the Iraq War siphoned off resources and talented personnel, undermining the gains that had been made. After eight years, he says, the United States has managed to push al Qa'ida's headquarters about one hundred miles across the border into Pakistan, the distance from New York to Philadelphia. While observing the tense and often adversarial relationship between NATO allies in the Coalition, Jones-who has distinguished himself at RAND and was recently named by Esquire as one of the "Best and Brightest" young policy experts-introduces us to key figures on both sides of the war. Harnessing important new research and integrating thousands of declassified government documents, Jones then analyzes the insurgency from a historical and structural point of view, showing how a rising drug trade, poor security forces, and pervasive corruption undermined the Karzai government, while Americans abandoned a successful strategy, failed to provide the necessary support, and allowed a growing sanctuary for insurgents in Pakistan to catalyze the Taliban resurgence. Examining what has worked thus far-and what has not-this serious and important book underscores the challenges we face in stabilizing the country and explains where we went wrong and what we must do if the United States is to avoid the disastrous fate that has befallen many of the great world powers to enter the region.

Korea used to be the forgotten war. Now, however, experts widely view it as a pivotal moment in the history of the Cold War, while its legacy still scars contemporary East Asian politics.

The sixtieth anniversary of the Korean War is a fitting time both to assess the current state of historiography on the conflict and to showcase new research on its different dimensions. This book contains six essays by leading experts in the field. These essays explore all aspects of the war, from collective security and alliance relations, to home front politics and historical memory. They are also international in scope, focusing not just on the familiar Western belligerents but also on the actions of the two Koreas, China and the Soviet Union.

These stimulating essays shed new light on various aspects of the Korean War experience, as well as examining why the war remains so important to the politics of the region.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Strategic Studies."

In 2014, the US marks the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the basis for the Johnson administration s escalation of American military involvement in Southeast Asia and war against North Vietnam. "Vietnam War Slang "outlines the context behind the slang used by members of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.

Troops facing and inflicting death display a high degree of linguistic creativity. Vietnam was the last American war fought by an army with conscripts, and their involuntary participation in the war added a dimension to the language. War has always been an incubator for slang; it is brutal, and brutality demands a vocabulary to describe what we don t encounter in peacetime civilian life. Furthermore, such language serves to create an intense bond between comrades in the armed forces, helping them to support the heavy burdens of war.

The troops in Vietnam faced the usual demands of war, as well as several that were unique to Vietnam a murky political basis for the war, widespread corruption in the ruling government, untraditional guerilla warfare, an unpredictable civilian population in Vietnam, and a growing lack of popular support for the war back in the US. For all these reasons, the language of those who fought in Vietnam was a vivid reflection of life in wartime.

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Vietnam War Slang "lays out the definitive record of the lexicon of Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. Assuming no prior knowledge, it presents around 2000 headwords, with each entry divided into sections giving parts of speech, definitions, glosses, the countries of origin, dates of earliest known citations, and citations. It will be an essential resource for Vietnam veterans and their families, students and readers of history, and anyone interested in the principles underpinning the development of slang. "

When Peter Scott began a 1968 tour in Vietnam advising ethnic Cambodian Khmer Krom paramilitaries, they shared only an earnest desire to check the spread of communism. It took nearly thirty years and a chance reunion for Scott to realize just how much they had become a part of him. This fascinating chronicle of Scott's experiences with the secret army of brave, disciplined warriors is by far the most moving and richly detailed account ever published of the deep bonds forged in war between Americans and our Asian allies.

Successfully blending intense combat narrative and stirring emotional drama, Scott vividly captures both the unique village culture of a little-known, highly spiritual people and their complex relationship with Special Forces soldiers, who found it increasingly difficult to match their charges' commitment to the costly conflict. With a novelist's powers of description and reflection and a professional soldier's keen insight and analysis, Scott raises the standard for literature about the Vietnam War with this searing portrait of promise and betrayal.

Building on his experiences as a Phoenix Program adviser near the Cambodian border, extensive interviews with Khmer Krom survivors, hundreds of hours of research in government archives, and requests for Freedom of Information Act disclosures, Scott seamlessly reconstructs the six-thousand-strong mercenary force's final crusade against communism, beginning in their ancestral home in 1970 and ending on the U.S. West Coast in 1995. Such a hauntingly evocative and highly readable book will both entertain and shock, and it is assured of a place among the classics on Vietnam.

When his electronic warfare plane--call sign Bat 21--was shot down on 2 April 1972, fifty-three-year-old Air Force navigator Iceal "Gene" Hambleton parachuted into the middle of a North Vietnamese invasion force and set off the biggest and most controversial air rescue effort of the Vietnam War. Now, after twenty-five years of official secrecy, the story of that dangerous and costly rescue is revealed for the first time by a decorated Air Force pilot and Vietnam veteran. Involving personnel from all services, including the Coast Guard, the unorthodox rescue operation claimed the lives of eleven soldiers and airmen, destroyed or damaged several aircraft, and put hundreds of airmen, a secret commando unit, and a South Vietnamese infantry division at risk. The book also examines the thorny debates arising from an operation that balanced one man's life against mounting U.S. and South Vietnamese casualties and material losses, the operation's impact on one of the most critical battles of the war, and the role played by search and rescue as America disengaged from that war.

Set as deeply in his mind as in the depths of the Southeast-Asian jungle, a young American soldier embarks on an evocative journey to a war that, for him, will never be over. I am that American soldier. It's 1969. 18 and living in New York City the world was a playground for Mickey, a naive Irish-American kid bored with his life who felt he was ready for the adventures of war. His father served in World War II, his brother a Marine in Vietnam it was now his turn. His 365 days, in the hell that was Vietnam, builds in torment until an attack on a bunker complex in Cambodia where everything goes terribly wrong. Wounded, his friend captured, he becomes a tormented survivor knowing he is always just a heartbeat away from death. His adventure turned nightmare brings a visceral understanding of the words penned by Thoreau, those very same words with which his father imparted enduring wisdom throughout his youth: ""Most men live lives of quiet desperation,"" especially those at war. This emotional journey of self-realisation chronicles the key perspective-shaping experiences of a U.S. Army grunt fighting in Vietnam.

Fallujah, the cradle of an insurgency that plunged Iraq into years of chaos and bloodshed, conjures up images of the brutal house-to-house fighting that occurred during the 2004 U.S. invasion of the iconic city. The violence peaked again two years later when American Marines and Iraqi government forces struggled with a reinvigorated insurgency and the prospect of premature withdrawal by U.S. forces. Now in paperback, Fallujah Awakens--widely praised for presenting a balanced description of this crucial transition from both the American and the Iraqi perspectives--recounts the complex story of the remarkable turn around that began to take place in 2006-2007. As an embedded journalist, Bill Ardolino was in a unique position to observe and explain how local tribal leaders and U.S. Marines forged a surprising alliance that enabled them to secure the heavily contested battleground. Based on more than 120 interviews with Iraqis and Americans, he explores how a company of Reservists, led by a medical equipment sales manager from Michigan, succeeded where previous efforts had stalled. Circumstance combined with smart leadership enabled Marines to build relationships with members of a Sunni tribe--once written off as dangerous and intractable--who pushed al Qaeda and other insurgents from their notoriously rebellious area. Accidental killings, intertribal rivalries, insurgents, and intrigue all conspired to undo the tenuous alliance forged on Fallujah's peninsula. But the partnership was cemented after a Marine commander's risky decision to welcome nearly 100 injured civilians onto a secure American facility after a ruthless chemical attack by al Qaeda. Ardolino's exhaustive documentation will prove valuable to military students, analysts, and historians and will help policy makers better understand what is and is not possible in counterinsurgency. Photographs and maps further enhance the reader's understanding of the struggle for Fallujah, from tribal dynamics to the geography of firefights.

Waging Gendered Wars examines, through the analytical lens of feminist international relations theory, how U.S. military women have impacted and been affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although women were barred from serving formally in ground combat positions within the U.S. armed forces during both wars, U.S. female soldiers are being killed in action. By examining how U.S. military women's agency as soldiers, veterans, and casualties of war affect the planning and execution of war, Eager assesses the ways in which the global world of international politics and warfare has become localized in the life and death narratives of female service personnel impacted by combat experience, homelessness, military sexual trauma, PTSD, and the deaths of fellow soldiers. Review: 'This book breaks new ground, revealing the complex issues that face women in military service, such as heroism, combat, sexual assault, PTSD, and as veterans. Through her research and interviews, the author provides us with surprising, uplifting, and sometimes alarming facts about the role of women in peacetime and war.'Margaret Gonzalez-Perez, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA

This collection of stories of American men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals their personal experiences as military combat personnel. Their stories are told through interviews, plus information from questionnaires and official military documents.

When in 1950 the United Nations called upon its members to provide aid to South Korea, more than forty nations responded. Some of these sent troops which fought under the United Nations Command, some sent commodities and medical supplies. Some nations offered moral and political support but for a variety of reasons were not able to send aid. This book looks at the nations involved, what was behind their willingness to provide troops or aid, or what prevented them from doing so. The military contribution of the nations involved is discussed. The combination of troops, and their individual needs, made the logistics of this enterprise difficult, but in the end troops from 17 nations fought together to defend the freedom of South Korea.

This book examines relations between China and the Soviet Union during the 1950s, and provides an insight into Chinese thinking about the Korean War. This volume is based on a translation of Shen Zihua's best-selling Chinese-language book, which broke the mainland Chinese taboo on publishing non-heroic accounts of the Korean War.The author combined information detailed in Soviet-era diplomatic documents (released after the collapse of the Soviet Union) with Chinese memoirs, official document collections and scholarly monographs, in order to present a non-ideological, realpolitik account of the relations, motivations and actions among three Communist actors: Stalin, Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung. This new translation represents a revisionist perspective on trilateral Communist alliance relations during the Korean War, shedding new light on the origins of the Sino-Soviet split and the rather distant relations between China and North Korea. It features a critical introduction to Shen's work and the text is based on original archival research not found in earlier books in English. This book will be of much interest to students of Communist China, Stalinist Russia, the Korean War, Cold War Studies and International History in general.

Immortal is the only single-volume English-language survey of Iran's military history. CIA analyst Steven R. Ward shows that Iran's soldiers, from the famed "Immortals" of ancient Persia to today's Revolutionary Guard, have demonstrated through the centuries that they should not be underestimated. This history also provides background on the nationalist, tribal, and religious heritages of the country to help readers better understand Iran and its security outlook. Immortal begins with the founding of ancient Persia's empire under Cyrus the Great and continues through the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and up to the present. Drawing on a wide range of sources including declassified documents, the author gives primary focus to the modern era to relate the build-up of the military under the last Shah, its collapse during the Islamic revolution, its fortunes in the Iran-Iraq War, and its rise from the ashes to help Iran become once again a major regional military power. He shows that, despite command and supply problems, Iranian soldiers demonstrate high levels of bravery and perseverance and have enjoyed surprising tactical successes even when victory has been elusive. These qualities and the Iranians' ability to impose high costs on their enemies by exploiting Iran's imposing geography bear careful consideration today by potential opponents.

The British Hurt Locker. In the Iraq War, Cpt Kevin Ivison defused bombs and IEDs left by the Taliban. Each time he took the 'longest walk' to a bomb, it could have been his last. How many times can a man stare death in the face before he breaks? Even the most skilful operators can only roll the dice so many times before they get unlucky . . . This was my bomb, my task and my fate alone. There was nothing left to do but walk. When two of his colleagues are killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, young bomb disposal officer Kevin Ivison is called in to defuse a second, even deadlier bomb just a hundred yards from the bodies of his friends. To make things worse, the entire area is under fire from snipers, and a crowd of angry Iraqis have begun to hurl petrol bombs... With little chance of living through this impossible task, Kevin leaves final messages for his loved ones and sets out alone towards the bomb that he is sure will be the last thing he sees. In this gut-wrenching and terrifying true story of heroism and survival, Kevin Ivison explains why he chose to be a bomb disposal expert in the first place, how he found the courage to face his death, and the unendurable stress that has given him nightmares ever since. An absorbing, honest, true story of life on the front lines in the Iraq War. Perfect for fans of The Hurt Locker, Sniper One and Bomb Hunters. 'The honesty with which Kevin relays his fear, his overwhelming sense that he is going to die, is impressive . . . unpretentious and accessible' Daily Telegraph 'Absorbing ... At the heart of the book is a taut, riveting account of the events of a single day - February 28, 2006 - when Ivison rushed to the scene of an IED ambush on a road known as RED ONE' - DAILY MAIL 'RED ONE is plain-spoken, heart-thumping stuff' - THE TIMES

This highly illustrated title traces the development of mercenary soldiering from individuals and small units in the African wars of the 1960s-90s to today's state-employed corporate military contractors. The phenomenon of mercenary soldiering has constantly recurred in the news since the 1960s and has always attracted lively interest. The concept of 'mercenaries' began in the former Belgian Congo during the 1960s when men such as Mike Hoare and Bob Denard assembled hundreds of military veterans to 'do the fighting' for a particular leader or faction. This idea soon evolved into small teams of individuals training and leading local forces with varying success; wars in Rhodesia and on South Africa's borders attracted foreign volunteers into national armed forces, and veterans of these conflicts later sought employment elsewhere as mercenaries. The wars in the former Yugoslavia also attracted foreign fighters inspired as much by political and religious motives as by pay. This picture then evolved again, as former officers with recent experience set up sophisticated commercial companies to identify and fill the needs of governments whose own militaries were inadequate. Most recently, the aftermath of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen such contractors taking on some of the burden of long-term security off major national armies, while the subsequent rise of ISIS/Daesh has added a parallel strain of ideological volunteers. The author is well placed to describe how the face of mercenary soldiering has evolved and changed over 60 years. Using first-hand accounts, photos and detailed illustrations, this book presents a compelling snapshot of the life, campaigns and kit used by mercenary operatives engaged in fighting within both larger and more specific conflicts around the world.

Detention operations are vital to U.S. military doctrine and crucial to the success of combat and recovery missions. This book shows that the image of abuse from Abu-Ghraib were but one small, harmful element in an overwhelmingly successful detention mission in Iraq. It focuses on the subsequent developments and successes, explaining the standard rule-of-law approach taken by the U.S. military and examining the work in Iraq of such leaders as Major General John D. Gardner and Major General Douglas M. Stone. Overall, the text moves away from the Abu-Ghraib scandal to illuminate a largely unknown successful development in the U.S. detention operations. Following the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2003-2004, the U.S. Department of Defense scrambled to recover its reputation and that of its troops. As the Bush Administration sought to redefine torture, military judge advocates consistently challenged such moves, arguing in favor of the Geneva Conventions' humanitarian practices. By 2006, Department of Defense policy stipulated full respect for and use of the Geneva Conventions. This development was indeed a victory for American support for rule of law in Iraq, as well as an affirmation of standard practices in the detention command, Task Force 134. Pressures of war, however, continued to present their own challenges.

Eighteen nurses who served in the United States military nurse corps during the Vietnam War present their personal accounts in this book. They represent all military branches and both genders. They served in the theater of combat, in the United States, and in countries allied with the U.S. They served in front line hospitals, hospital ships, large medical centers and small clinics. They speak of caring for casualties during a conflict filled with controversy. They speak of patriotism, belief in a greater power, the gaining of knowledge about the nursing profession and about themselves, of persecution and discrimination, of travel and the adventure of friendship and love.

On November 8, 1967, the author arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, ill-prepared for the training and abuse that awaited him in boot camp. At the time, he would have done anything to escape; only upon reflection years later did he realize that the self-confidence instilled in him by his drill instructors had probably saved his life in Vietnam. A few months after boot camp, Private Ball was shipped out to Vietnam, joining F Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, near Khe Sanh. As an infantryman, a grunt in the vernacular of the Corps, Ball, like the other youths of F Company, did a very difficult and deadly job in such places as the A Shau Valley, Leatherneck Square, the DMZ and other obscure but critical I Corps locales. His--their--fear of death mingled with homesickness. Little did they realize that the horrors of the Vietnam War--horrors that while in-country they often claimed did not even exist--would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Pat Tillman was well-known to American sports fans: a chisel-jawed and talented young professional football star, he was on the brink of signing a million dollar contract when, in 2001, al-Qaeda launched terrorist attacks against his country. Driven by deeply felt moral patriotism, he walked away from fame and money to enlist in the United States Special Operations Forces. A year later he was killed - apparently in the line of fire - on a desolate hillside near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. News of Tillman's death shocked America. But even as the public mourned his loss, the US Army aggressively maneuvered to conceal the truth: that it was a ranger in Tillman's own platoon who had fired the fatal shots. In Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer reveals how an entire country was deliberately deceived by those at the very highest levels of the US army and government. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer's storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about men and war.

This book narrates the history of the different peoples who have lived in the three major regions of Viet Nam over the past 3,000 years. It brings to life their relationships with these regions' landscapes, water resources, and climatic conditions, their changing cultures and religious traditions, and their interactions with their neighbors in China and Southeast Asia. Key themes include the dramatic impact of changing weather patterns from ancient to medieval and modern times, the central importance of riverine and maritime communications, ecological and economic transformations, and linguistic and literary changes. The country's long experience of regional diversity, multi-ethnic populations, and a multi-religious heritage that ranges from local spirit cults to the influences of Buddhism, Confucianism and Catholicism, makes for a vividly pluralistic narrative. The arcs of Vietnamese history include the rise and fall of different political formations, from chiefdoms to Chinese provinces, from independent kingdoms to divided regions, civil wars, French colonies, and modern republics. In the twentieth century anticolonial nationalism, the worldwide depression, Japanese occupation, a French attempt at reconquest, the traumatic American-Vietnamese war, and the 1975 communist victory all set the scene for the making of contemporary Viet Nam. Rapid economic growth in recent decades has transformed this one-party state into a global trading nation. Yet its rich history still casts a long shadow. Along with other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Viet Nam is now involved in a tense territorial standoff in the South China Sea, as a rival of China and a "partner" of the United States. If its independence and future geographical unity seem assured, Viet Nam's regional security and prospects for democracy remain clouded.

First published in 1985, this is a book written at the height of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Based on five clandestine trips into Afghanistan with the resistance, the book examines why the Soviets invaded in 1979 and what they were seeking to defend. The author analyses their deliberate policy of migratory genocide through a combination of aerial bombardments, political repression and economic blockades. The book is written by the journalist Ed Girardet, one of the world's leading authorities on the conflict, whose particular strength is his dispassionate reporting style and his firsthand proximity to the conflict. He interviewed many of the leaders of the Afghan resistance, both inside Afghanistan and in the refugee camps and he explains in depth the nature of the Afghan Islamic anti-communist struggle for independence. This is a book in the finest tradition of war reporting on the front line and the reissue is essential reading for all those interested in the history of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Voicing Dissent presents a unique and original series of interviews with American artists (including Guerrilla Girls on Tour, Tony Shalhoub, Shepard Fairey, Sean Astin, and many others) who have voiced their opposition to the war in Iraq. Following Pierre Bourdieu's example, these discussions are approached sociologically and provide a thorough analysis of the relationships between arts and politics as well as the limits and conditions of political speech and action. These painters and graphic artists, musicians, actors, playwrights, theatre directors and filmmakers reveal their perceptions of politics, war, security and terrorism issues, the Middle East, their experiences with activism, as well as their definition of the artist's role and their practice of citizenship. Addressing the crucial questions for contemporary democracies - such as artists' function in society, the crisis of political legitimacy and representation, the rise of new modes of contestation, and the limits to free public speech - this book will be of interest to scholars in sociology, politics, and the arts.

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese materials as well as French, British, Canadian, and American documents, Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war. Specifically, he examines the internal debates and other elements that shaped Hanoi's revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding U.S. military intervention, and resulting domestic and foreign programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent of hostilities in 1965, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most tragic conflict of the Cold War era.

When Taliban forces took Kabul on 15 August 2021, it marked the end of the Western intervention that had begun nearly twenty years earlier with the US-led invasion. The fall of Afghanistan triggered a seismic shock in the West, where US President Joe Biden announced an end to America's involvement in conflicts overseas. In Afghanistan itself it produced terror for the future for those who had worked with and grown up under the coalition-supported administration. Now, with the country spiralling into economic collapse and famine, Losing Afghanistan is a plea for us to keep our gaze on the plight of the people of Afghanistan and to understand how action and inaction in the West shaped the fate of the nation. Why was Afghanistan lost? Can it be regained? And what happens next? Edited by international development expert Brian Brivati, this collection of twenty-one essays by analysts, politicians, soldiers, commentators and practitioners - interspersed with powerful eyewitness testimony from Afghan voices - explains what happened in Afghanistan and why, and what the future holds both for its people and for liberal intervention.