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Books > Humanities > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
Helsing provides a unique perspective on the escalation of the
Vietnam War. He examines what many analysts and former policymakers
in the Johnson administration have acknowledged as a crucial factor
in the way the United States escalated in Vietnam: Johnson's desire
for both guns and butter--his belief that he must stem the advance
of communism in Southeast Asia while pursuing a Great Society at
home.
He argues that the United States government, the president, and
his key advisers in particular engaged in a major pattern of
deception in how the United States committed its military force in
Vietnam. He then argues that a significant sector of the government
was deceived as well. The first half of the book traces and
analyzes the pattern of deception from 1964 through July 1965. The
second half shows how the military and political decisions to
escalate influenced--and were influenced by--the economic advice
and policies being given the President. This in-depth analysis will
be of particular concern to scholars, students, and researchers
involved with U.S. foreign and military policy, the Vietnam War,
and Presidential war powers.
The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations presents the story
of this seminal conflict as told through the words of the famous,
infamous, and anonymous. All sides of the controversy are presented
in chronological resource that starts with a look at Vietnamese
history, then traces the events preceding France's war, continues
through America's entry into the conflict, and concludes with the
war's aftermath. This is the story of the Vietnam War told through
quotations in chronological sequence. Starting with the beginnings
of Vietnamese history, it traces the events preceding the French
war, continues through the American war, and ends with its
aftermath. All sides of the controversy are represented. Here are
the voices of warriors, presidents, generals, government leaders,
civilians, aid workers, pilots, infantrymen, nurses, historians,
war correspondents, sociologists, POWs, peasants, draft dodgers,
guerillas, and war resisters. They speak from government capitals,
hooches, hospital wards, jungle trails, landing zones, aircraft
carriers, draft boards, Buddhist temples, and prison cells. They
talk of firefights, ambushes in the jungle, bombing raids, coups,
assassinations, suicides, demonstrations, atrocities, and
teach-ins. Here are Ho Chi Minh, Lyndon Johnson, Giap,
Westmoreland, Kennedy, De Gaulle, Eisenhower, Nixon, McNamara,
Kissinger, and many people you have never heard of. Meet Hanoi
Hannah, who broadcast propaganda from the North Vietnamese capital;
John McCain tells you what it was like to be shot down over enemy
territory and taken prisoner; John Kerry tells a U.S. Senate
committee why he opposes the Vietnam War. You will learn about My
Lai, Agent Orange, Kent State, the Pentagon Papers, and the plan to
free American POWs that went awry. Features include a chronology,
biographical sketches, Medal of Honor winners, bibliography,
nineteen photos, and an index.
The Vietnam War has had many long-reaching, traumatic effects, not
just on the veterans of the war, but on their children as well. In
this book, Weber examines the concept of the war as a social monad,
a confusing array of personal stories and public histories that
disrupt traditional ways of knowing the social world for the second
generation.
SOS and then stopped the ship. Seven Khmer Rouge soldiers boarded
the Mayaguez and their leader, Battalion Commander Sa Mean, pointed
at a map indicating that the ship should proceed to the east of
Poulo Wai. One of the crew members broadcast a Mayday which was
picked up by an Australian vessel. The Mayaguez arrived off Poulo
Wai at approximately 4pm and a further 20 Khmer Rouge boarded the
vessel. At 12:05 EST (21:05 Cambodia), a meeting of the National
Security Council (NSC) was convened to discuss the situation. The
members of the NSC were determined to end the crisis decisively,
believing that the fall of South Vietnam less than two weeks before
and the forced withdrawal of the United States from Cambodia,
(Operation Eagle Pull) and South Vietnam (Operation Frequent Wind)
had severely damaged the U.S.'s reputation. They also wished to
avoid comparisons to the Pueblo incident of 1968, where the failure
to promptly use military force to halt the hijacking of a US
intelligence ship by North Korea led to an eleven-month hostage
situation.
In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign
relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history
and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon's Vietnam
policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main
controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon's first
presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam
War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory
that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the
war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of
"containment," protect America's credibility, and defy the left's
antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon's moves
made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to
significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a
negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American
defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations.
Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon's Vietnam
strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which
this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning
from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place
the impact of Nixon's policies and decisions in the larger context
of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs
of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.
Accidental Soldier depicts Richard B. Schwartz's military
experiences, first as an ROTC cadet at the University of Notre Dame
and finally as an Army veteran teaching in Madison, Wisconsin. In
1959, Vietnam was little more than a word on a map; within ten
years, Americans saw the Tet Offensive and their campuses in
flames. Schwartz was at the ground zeroes of that time, teaching at
the United States Military Academy from 1967-69 and then going to
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, just after the Dow riots and
before the bombing of Sterling Hall. The central portion of the
book focuses upon Schwartz's experience at West Point, its cadets,
officer corps and system of education. A sequel to his
award-winning memoir, The Biggest City in America, Accidental
Soldier reflects upon his military and academic experience through
the perspective of an over forty-year teaching career, twenty-nine
of which were spent as a dean at Wisconsin, Georgetown and the
University of Missouri, Columbia.
In the midst of the Vietnam War, two titans of the Senate, J.
William Fulbright and John C. Stennis, held public hearings to
debate the conflict's future. In this intriguing new work,
historian Joseph A. Fry provides the first comparative analysis of
these inquiries and the senior southern Senators who led them. The
Senators' shared aim was to alter the Johnson administration's
strategy and bring an end to the war-but from dramatically
different perspectives. Fulbright hoped to pressure Johnson to halt
escalation and seek a negotiated settlement, while Stennis wanted
to prompt the President to bomb North Vietnam more aggressively and
secure a victorious end to the war. Publicized and televised, these
hearings added fuel to the fire of national debate over Vietnam
policy and captured the many arguments of both hawks and doves. Fry
details the dramatic confrontations between the Senate committees
and the administration spokesmen, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara,
and he probes the success of congressional efforts to influence
Vietnam policy. Ultimately, Fry shows how the Fulbright and Stennis
hearings provide vivid insight into the debate over why the United
States was involved in Vietnam and how the war should be conducted.
In the midst of the Vietnam War, two titans of the Senate, J.
William Fulbright and John C. Stennis, held public hearings to
debate the conflict's future. In this intriguing new work,
historian Joseph A. Fry provides the first comparative analysis of
these inquiries and the senior southern Senators who led them. The
Senators' shared aim was to alter the Johnson administration's
strategy and bring an end to the war-but from dramatically
different perspectives. Fulbright hoped to pressure Johnson to halt
escalation and seek a negotiated settlement, while Stennis wanted
to prompt the President to bomb North Vietnam more aggressively and
secure a victorious end to the war. Publicized and televised, these
hearings added fuel to the fire of national debate over Vietnam
policy and captured the many arguments of both hawks and doves. Fry
details the dramatic confrontations between the Senate committees
and the administration spokesmen, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara,
and he probes the success of congressional efforts to influence
Vietnam policy. Ultimately, Fry shows how the Fulbright and Stennis
hearings provide vivid insight into the debate over why the United
States was involved in Vietnam and how the war should be conducted.
In this book James E. Westheider explores the social and
professional paradoxes facing African-American soldiers in Vietnam.
Service in the military started as a demonstration of the merits of
integration as blacks competed with whites on a near equal basis
for the first time. Military service, especially service in
Vietnam, helped shape modern black culture and fostered a sense of
black solidarity in the Armed Forces. But as the war progressed,
racial violence became a major problem for the Armed Forces as they
failed to keep pace with the sweeping changes in civilian society.
Despite the boasts of the Department of Defense, personal and
institutional racism remained endemic to the system. Westheider
tells this story expertly and accessibly by providing the history
and background of African American participation in the U.S. Armed
Forces then following all the way through to the experience of
African Americans returning home from the Vietnam war.
When John Burdick received his orders to ship to Vietnam in 1967,
he was certain his life was over. His goal was to return to the
United States alive and on his feet no matter what it took. He had
been recruited by the military to become an intelligence agent, and
for a college graduate student from California, it sounded
intriguing. But serving in Vietnam would require all of his skills
to stay alive. Dressed as a civilian and with little formal
training, Burdick learned quickly and executed missions
effectively. He fulfilled several purposes in Vietnam-from
infiltrating the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army command
infrastructure to searching for American prisoners of war. The war
hit hard. The deaths of all the young men haunted him. He could
trust no one, including the military establishment who tried to
squash each success the intelligence personnel achieved. In A
Sphinx, author John Burdick recounts a powerful and emotional
narrative following his duty in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. It
uncovers behind-the-scenes footage of a military intelligence agent
and his quest to help more American soldiers come home alive.
The Vietnam War is anything but a forgotten war. Even today, the
strategies that led to an unexpected American defeat are hotly
debated, and much remains controversial and unclear, which is not
surprising given the nature of the combat in which the Vietnamese
guerrilla warfare eventually won out over high-tech weaponry. The
task of clarifying the issues without oversimplifying this complex
war that impacted the world is undertaken by The A to Z of the
Vietnam War: first in its chronology, then in its introduction, but
mainly in a substantial dictionary section including hundreds of
entries on significant persons (military and political), places,
events, armed units, battles and lesser engagements, and weapons.
And for those seeking further information, an extensive
bibliography is included.
The Vietnam War was an immense national tragedy that played itself
out in the individual experiences of millions of Americans. The
conflict tested and tormented the country collectively and
individually in ways few historical events have. The Human
Tradition in the Vietnam Era provides window into some of those
personal journeys through that troubled time. The poor and the
powerful, male and female, hawk and dove, civilian and military,
are all here. This rich collection of original biographical essays
provides contemporary readers with a sense of what it was like to
be an American in the 1960s and early 1970s, while also helping
them gain an understanding of some of the broader issues of the
era. The diverse biographies included in this book put a human face
on the tensions and travails of the Vietnam Era. Students will gain
a better understanding of how individuals looked at and lived
through this contro-versial conflict in American history.
By 1969, the Sikorski H-34 was an older helicopter with severe
limitations for combat duty in Vietnam. For pilots like U.S. Marine
Lieutenant Rick Gehweiler, the good news was it could still take
significant damage and keep flying. His vivid memoir narrates his
harrowing, at times deadly flight missions under fire, as
experienced in the cockpit, along with anecdotes of tragedy and
humor from his 13-month tour through Da Nang and Phu Bai.
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