Download or read book The American Foundation Myth in Vietnam written by William W. Cobb (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Foundation Myth in Vietnam deals with how the results of the Vietnam War challenged the long-standing belief in America's role in the world as a unique nation favored by God that carries a global responsibility with it. The author disputes the commonly held belief that America discarded this foundation myth, developed out of John Winthrop's idea of a "city on a hill," following Vietnam. He reexamines the myth in the context of American history to show that the country still firmly attaches itself to the rhetoric of the foundation myth. The analysis divides Americans into one group that believes America's mission cannot be fulfilled without active involvement on the global stage, and one that maintains that its mythic goals are fulfilled most effectively by developing itself as the world's model for freedom and democracy. The tension created between these perspectives creates a dynamic and durable quality that fuels the power of the foundation myth even after a seemingly destructive event such as the Vietnam War.
Download or read book The American Foundation Myth in Vietnam written by William Warren Cobb and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Myths of Tet written by Edwin Moïse and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late in 1967, American officials and military officers pushed an optimistic view of the Vietnam War. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) said that the war was being won, and that Communist strength in South Vietnam was declining. Then came the Tet Offensive of 1968. In its broadest and simplest outline, the conventional wisdom about the offensive—that it was a military defeat for the Communists but a political victory for them, because it undermined support for the war in the United States—is correct. But much that has been written about the Tet Offensive has been misleading. Edwin Moïse shows that the Communist campaign shocked the American public not because the American media exaggerated its success, but because it was a bigger campaign—larger in scale, much longer in duration, and resulting in more American casualties—than most authors have acknowledged. MACV, led by General William Westmoreland, issued regular estimates of enemy strength in South Vietnam. During 1967, intelligence officers at MACV were increasingly required to issue low estimates to show that the war was being won. Their underestimation of enemy strength was most extreme in January 1968, just before the Tet Offensive. The weak Communist force depicted in MACV estimates would not have been capable of sustaining heavy combat month after month like they did in 1968. Moïse also explores the errors of the Communists, using Vietnamese sources. The first wave of Communist attacks, at the end of January 1968, showed gross failures of coordination. Communist policy throughout 1968 and into 1969 was wildly overoptimistic, setting impossible goals for their forces. While acknowledging the journalists and historians who have correctly reported various parts of the story, Moïse points out widespread misunderstandings in regard to the strength of Communist forces in Vietnam, the disputes among American intelligence agencies over estimates of enemy strength, the actual pattern of combat in 1968, the effects of Tet on American policy, and the American media’s coverage of all these issues.
Download or read book American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam written by John Hellmann and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes critical estimates of such novels as The ugly American, by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, and The Green Berets, by Robin Moore; and such films as The deer hunter and Apocalypse now.
Download or read book Vietnam and Other American Fantasies written by Howard Bruce Franklin and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a cultural historian, this text offers a wide-ranging exploration of the causes, meaning and continuing significance of the American war in Vietnam, arguing that the war was not a mistake, or a quagmire but a defining event in global history.
Download or read book Debating Vietnam written by Joseph A. Fry and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2006 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book America Right or Wrong written by Anatol Lieven and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American policies, the American economy, and the health of the American political system are all of crucial importance to the world - and to other Western democracies in particular. Yet in recent years, the American political scene has become increasingly radicalized, embittered, and polarized - contributing to a near-paralysis of economic policy and intense partisanship concerning relations with the rest of the world. In this essential guide to the present state of US politics, renowned commentator Anatol Lieven pin-points American nationalism as the key to explaining the present troubles in America's body politic. Delving deep into the cultural and historical roots of the phenomenon, Lieven portrays American nationalism as a highly complex mixture of different elements which are sometimes opposed to each other, and sometimes intertwined. On the one hand, there is the core tradition of American civic nationalism based on the universalist 'American Creed' of almost religious reverence for American democratic institutions and the U.S. constitution. On the other, there exists a chauvinist nationalism which holds that these institutions are underpinned by cultural values which belong only to certain Americans, and which is strongly hostile both to foreigners and to minorities in America which are felt not to share those values. In this updated edition of his classic study, Anatol Lieven traces the re-emergence of radical strains of American nationalism in recent years, manifested in the rise of the Tea Party movement and the ongoing radicalization of the Republican Party. He attributes this to a combination of the effects of 9/11, the influence of the alliance with Israel, and above all, the long-term and increasing economic decline of large sections of the white middle classes. Deprived by nationalist ideology of the ability to explain what is happening to them in rational terms, many of these people are now turning to ideologies and demonologies that contribute greatly to the paralysis of effective government in what remains the world's most powerful and important country.
Download or read book Aspects of American History written by Simon Henderson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aspects of American History examines major themes, personalities and issues across American history, using topic focused essays. Each chapter focuses on key events and time periods within a broad framework looking at liberty and equality, the role of government and national identity. The volume engages with its central themes through a broad ranging examination of aspects of the American past, including discussions of political history, foreign policy, presidential leadership and the construction of national memory. In each essay, Simon Henderson: introduces fresh angles to traditional topics consolidates recent research in themed essays analyzes views of different historians offers an interpretive rather than narrative approach gives concise treatment to complex issues. Including an introduction which places key themes in context, this book enables readers to make comparisons and trace major thematic developments across American history.
Download or read book Supplement to Vietnam 1964 1973 written by Elwood L. White and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bibliography is a supplement to the Special Bibliography Series, Number 80, compiled in 1990 to support the 14th Military History Symposium. It is primarily intended as a listing of scholarly works completed since 1990 on the Vietnam War, although some works prior to that date are included. The bibliography is selected from the holdings on that war housed in the McDermott library, United States Air Force Academy, and includes books, journal articles, government publications, and technical reports. Newspaper articles, works of fiction, collections of poetry, and most personal narratives are not included. The Clark Special Collections Branch of the library has extensive primary source materials and artifacts focused on American POW experiences in Southeast Asia. Those items are also excluded from this bibliography since they are limited to in-house use only. Individuals wanting information about that collection should contact the Special Collections Curator and Academy Archivist.
Download or read book American Mythologies written by William Blazek and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This challenging new book looks at the current reinvention of American Studies: a reinvention that, among other things, has put the whole issue of just what is 'American' and what is 'American Studies' into contention. The collection focuses, in particular, on American mythology. The editors themselves have written essays that examine the connections between mythologies of the United States and those of either classical European or Native American traditions. William Blazek considers Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine novels as chronicles combining Ojibwa mythology and contemporary U.S. culture in ways that reinvest a sense of mythic identity within a multicultural, postmodern America. Michael K Glenday's analysis of Jayne Anne Phillips' work and explores in it the contexts where myth and dream interact with each other. Betty Louise Bell is one of four essayists in this collection who focus their criticism on authors of Native American heritage. In the first part of 'Indians with Voices', Bell carefully argues that Roy Harvey Pearce's seminal Native American studies text Savagism and Civilization fails to acknowledge its white elitist assumptions about what constitutes The American Mind and views Native Americans along a primitive-savage binary that helped to create a twentieth-century 'national mythos of innocence and destiny'. Other essays include Christopher Brookeman's study of the impact of Muhammad Ali on Norman Mailer's non-fiction writing about heavyweight boxing.
Download or read book American Myth American Ideology and the Vietnam War written by William R. Merriman and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book America Right or Wrong An Anatomy of American Nationalism written by Anatol Lieven Senior Associate for Foreign and Security Policy Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004-10-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "America keeps a fine house," Anatol Lieven writes, "but in its cellar there lives a demon, whose name is nationalism." In this controversial critique of America's role in the world, Lieven contends that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11 has been shaped by the special character of our national identity, which embraces two contradictory features. One, "The American Creed," is a civic nationalism which espouses liberty, democracy, and the rule of law. It is our greatest legacy to the world. But our almost religious belief in the "Creed" creates a tendency toward a dangerously "messianic" element in American nationalism, the desire to extend American values and American democracy to the whole world, irrespective of the needs and desires of others. The other feature, populist (or what is sometimes called "Jacksonian") nationalism, has its roots in an aggrieved, embittered, and defensive White America, centered largely in the American South. Where the "Creed" is optimistic and triumphalist, Jacksonian nationalism is fed by a profound pessimism and a sense of personal, social, religious, and sectional defeat. Lieven examines how these two antithetical impulses have played out in recent US policy, especially in the Middle East and in the nature of U.S. support for Israel. He suggests that in this region, the uneasy combination of policies based on two contradictory traditions have gravely undermined U.S. credibility and complicated the war against terrorism. It has never been more vital that Americans understand our national character. This hard-hitting critique directs a spotlight on the American political soul and on the curious mixture of chauvinism and idealism that has driven the Bush administration.
Download or read book The Function of the Founding Myth in the American Political System written by John Alfred Tinkham and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Supplement to Vietnam 1964 1973 written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Recreating American Mythology Vietnam Veterans in Oliver Stone s Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven Earth written by Thomas Hunziker and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 5,5 (Schweiz), University of Zurich (Englisches Seminar), course: Seminar: From Disneyland to Da Nang, language: English, abstract: The myth of the United States was that they are invincible, and this was also reflected in the war movies and westerns during and after World War II. When the US entered the Vietnam War the experience of the soldiers proved to be different from the representations of war they had witnessed in movies. The traditional combat films were unable to adapt the new signifiers of the Vietnam war and the genre was abandoned for a while. Rejecting the notion of invincibility, directors after the Vietnam War depicted the horror and madness of the conflict and, indeed, rebuilt a new myth. One of the directors who decided to craft a new combat film was Oliver Stone. While he received critical praise for Platoon (1986) and his depiction of the Vietnam War was confirmed by many veterans, he was publicly denounced as a traitor and attacked for the representation of the war in Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Although his most hostile critics chose to attack the alternation of facts, Stone was - and still is - criticized or applauded for debunking old myths and creating new ones. For an investigation of Oliver Stone's technique of creating new myths, this essay analyzes his films Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth (1993).
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Vietnam written by Bruce M. Lockhart and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2006-02-27 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vietnam became part of French Indochina in 1887 and did not regain its independence again until after the Vietnam War. However, despite a relatively peaceful two decades the country experienced little economic growth because of conservative leadership policies. In an effort to change this stagnation, Vietnamese authorities have committed to economic liberalization and enacted structural reforms needed to modernize the economy and to produce more competitive, export-driven industries. The third edition of this dictionary focuses on the recent changes and leadership of Vietnam while giving due attention to the earlier kingdoms, the period of French Indochina, the wars for liberation, the Vietnam War, and much more. Hundreds of cross-referenced A to Z dictionary entries are included on political, economic, social and cultural aspects as well as the major cities and geographic features. This book also contains a chronology and introduction that traces Vietnam's history, as well as a bibliography.
Download or read book Founding Myths written by Ray Raphael and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-07-04 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published ten years ago, award-winning historian Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths has since established itself as a landmark of historical myth-busting. With the author’s trademark wit and flair, Founding Myths exposes the errors and inventions in America’s most cherished tales, from Paul Revere’s famous ride to Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech. For the seventy thousand readers who have been captivated by Raphael’s eye-opening accounts, history has never been the same. In this revised tenth-anniversary edition, Raphael revisits the original myths and explores their further evolution over the past decade, uncovering new stories and peeling back additional layers of misinformation. This new edition also examines the highly politicized debates over America’s past, as well as how school textbooks and popular histories often reinforce rather than correct historical mistakes. A book that “explores the truth behind the stories of the making of our nation” (National Public Radio), this revised edition of Founding Myths will be a welcome resource for anyone seeking to separate historical fact from fiction.
