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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam.
Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and
operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a
strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was
grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential
advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat.
Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a
Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as
the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his
belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his
concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of
the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation.
Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a
historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the
attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe
Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes
and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts
from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an
annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key
people, places, and events.
An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam
War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide
that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point
in America's longest war.
Since the fall of Saigon in 1975 there have been many books
published on why (and whether) America lost the war in Vietnam. The
senior American commander in charge of prosecuting the war during
its buildup and peak of fighting, Admiral U.S.G. Sharp, concluded
his memoir, saying: "The real tragedy of Vietnam is that this war
was not won by the other side, by Hanoi or Moscow or Peiping. It
was lost in Washington, D. C." This remains an all too common
belief. The stark facts, though, are that the Vietnam War was lost
before the first American shot was fired. In fact, it was lost
before the first French Expeditionary Corps shot, almost two
decades earlier, and was finally lost when the South Vietnamese
fought partly, then entirely, on their own. Offering an informed
and nuanced narrative of the entire 30-year war in Vietnam, this
book seeks to explain why. It is written by a combatant not only in
six violent, large battles and many smaller firefights, but a
leader with a full range of pacification duties, a commander who
lost 43 wonderful young men killed and many more wounded, men who
were doing what their country asked of them. This story is the
result of a quest for answers by one who, after decades of
wondering what it was about - what was it all about? - turned to a
years-long search of French, American, and Vietnamese sources. It
is a story of success on the one hand, defeat on the other, and the
ingredients of both, inspirational or sordid as they may be. It is
a story mostly lived and revealed by the people inside Vietnam who
were directly involved in the war: from leaders in high positions,
down to the jungle boots and sandals level of the fighters, and
among the Vietnamese people who were living the war. Because of
what was happening inside Vietnam itself, no matter what policies
and directives came out of Paris or Washington, or the influences
in Moscow or Beijing, it is about a Vietnamese idea which would
eventually triumph over bullets.
Monuments and Memory-Making immerses students in the conversations
and controversies that emerged as the nation grappled with how best
to memorialize what was at the time the longest military conflict
in US history. As students engage in the historical process of
memory-making, they will work to reconcile the varied and often
contradictory voices that rose up after the fall of Saigon.
Students will tackle questions such as How do we create a national
memory of the past? How do we reckon with a war that was widely
understood as a defeat for the United States? How do we remember
the dead while honoring the living? How do we reunite a fractured
nation? How do public opinion and public consciousness shape our
understanding of the past, and whose voices are privileged over
others? Working with primary and secondary sources, students will
take command of the subject matter as they immerse themselves in
their individual roles as historical actors in the debate of how
best to remember and honor American participation and sacrifice in
the Vietnam War.
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God's Love
(Paperback)
Ruth E Sheets
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R374
R306
Discovery Miles 3 060
Save R68 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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In the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers
and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work
through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule,
these workers were drawn to the opportunities the military offered
and became active participants of the U.S. empire, most centrally
during the U.S. war in Vietnam. Simeon Man uncovers the
little-known histories of Filipinos, South Koreans, and Asian
Americans who fought in Vietnam, revealing how U.S. empire was
sustained through overlapping projects of colonialism and race
making. Through their military deployments, Man argues, these
soldiers took part in the making of a new Pacific world-a
decolonizing Pacific-in which the imperatives of U.S. empire
collided with insurgent calls for decolonization, producing often
surprising political alliances, imperial tactics of suppression,
and new visions of radical democracy.
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