Download or read book The Pentagon s Battle for the American Mind written by Lori L. Bogle and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-12 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. military has historically believed itself to be the institution best suited to develop the character, spiritual values, and patriotism of American youth. In Strategy for Survival, Lori Bogle investigates how the armed forces assigned itself the role of guardian and interpreter of national values and why it sought to create “ideologically sound Americans capable of defeating communism and assuring the victory of democracy at home and abroad.” Bogle shows that a tendency by some in the armed forces to diffuse their view of America’s civil religion among the general population predated tension with the Soviet Union. Bogle traces this trend from the Progressive Era though the early Cold War, when the Truman and Eisenhower administrations took seriously the battle of ideologies of that era and formulated plans that promised not only to meet the armed forces’ manpower needs but also to prepare the American public morally and spiritually for confrontation with the evils of communism. Both Truman’s plan for Universal Military Training and Eisenhower’s psychological warfare programs promoted an evangelical democracy and sought to inculcate a secular civil-military religion in the general public. During the early 1960s, joint military-civilian anticommunist conferences, organized by the authority of the Department of Defense, were exploited by ultra-conservative civilians advancing their own political and religious agendas. Bogle’s analysis suggests that cooperation among evangelicals, the military, and government was considered both necessary and normal. The Boy Scouts pushed a narrow vision of American democracy, and Joe McCarthy’s chauvinism was less an aberration than a particularly noxious manifestation of a widespread attitude. To combat communism, American society and its armed forces embraced brainwashing—narrow moral education that attacked everyone and everything not consonant with their view of the world and how it ought to be ordered. Exposure of this alliance ultimately dissolved it. However, the cult of toughness and the blinkered view of reality that characterized the armed forces and American society during the Cold War are still valued by many, and are thus still worthy of consideration.
Download or read book The Pentagon s Brain written by Annie Jacobsen and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, in this Pulitzer Prize finalist from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain," from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present. This is the book on DARPA -- a compelling narrative about this clandestine intersection of science and the American military and the often frightening results.
Download or read book Victory On The Potomac written by James R. Locher and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War is waged not only on battlefields. In the mid-1980s a high-stakes political struggle to redesign the relationships among the president, secretary of defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and warfighting commanders in the field resulted in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. Author James R. Locher III played a key role in the congressional effort to repair a dysfunctional military whose interservice squabbling had cost American taxpayers billions of dollars and put the lives of thousands of servicemen and women at risk. Victory on this front helped make possible the military successes the United States has enjoyed since the passage of the bill and to prepare it for the challenges it must still face.Victory on the Potomac provides the first detailed history of how Congress unified the Pentagon and does so with the benefit of an insider's view. In a fast-paced account that reads like a novel, Locher follows the bill through congressional committee to final passage, making clear that the process is neither abstract nor automatic. His vivid descriptions bring to life the amazing cast of this real-life drama, from the straight-shooting chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Barry Goldwater, to the peevishly stubborn secretary of defense, Caspear Weinberger.Locher's analysis of political maneuvering and bureaucratic infighting will fascinate anyone who has an interest in how government works, and his understanding of the stakes in military reorganization will make clear why this legislative victory meant so much to American military capability. James R. Locher III, a graduate of West Point and Harvard Business School began his career in Washington as an executive trainee in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He has worked in the White House, the Pentagon, and the Senate. During the period covered by this book, he was a staff member for the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Since then, he has served as an assistant secretary of defense in the first Bush and the early Clinton administrations. Currently, he works as a consultant and lecturer on defense matters.
Download or read book The Pentagon s New Map written by Thomas P.M. Barnett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-05-03 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what? Thomas Barnett has the answers. A senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military policymakers-and now he gives it to you. The Pentagon's New Map is a cutting-edge approach to globalization that combines security, economic, political, and cultural factors to do no less than predict and explain the nature of war and peace in the twenty-first century. Building on the works of Friedman, Huntington, and Fukuyama, and then taking a leap beyond, Barnett crystallizes recent American military history and strategy, sets the parameters for where our forces will likely be headed in the future, outlines the unique role that America can and will play in establishing international stability-and provides much-needed hope at a crucial yet uncertain time in world history. For anyone seeking to understand the Iraqs, Afghanistans, and Liberias of the present and future, the intimate new links between foreign policy and national security, and the operational realities of the world as it exists today, The Pentagon's New Map is a template, a Rosetta stone. Agree with it, disagree with it, argue with it-there is no book more essential for 2004 and beyond.
Download or read book Forging the Shield written by Donald A. Carter and published by Department of the Army. This book was released on 2015 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illustrated book that includes tables, charts, and maps primarily discusses the role of USAREUR (US Army Europe) in rearming and training the new German Army which was perhaps the Army's single greatest contribution toward maintaining security in Western Europe. Likewise, the relationship between American soldiers and their French and West German hosts evolved over time and is a critical element in telling the story of the US Army in Europe.
Download or read book To Win a Nuclear War written by Michio Kaku and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Win a Nuclear War records as fully as we are likely to find what has gone on in the minds of American leaders and nuclear strategists on this awesome subject during these fateful forty years. It is an appalling story... This book compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race."--From the foreword by Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. To Win a Nuclear War provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present. Based on recently declassified Top Secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this book meticulously traces how U.S. policy makers in over a dozen episodes have threatened to initiate a nuclear attack. The book also documents the surprising reasons why the war plans were never carried out and discloses the deeper, hidden meaning of the Star Wars program.
Download or read book The Declassification Engine written by Matthew Connelly and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE • Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit? “A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of ‘the dark state'.... At a time when federal agencies are increasingly classifying or destroying documents with historical significance, this book could not be more important.” —Eric Schlosser, New York Times best-selling author of Command and Control Before World War II, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. In all but the most serious of circumstances, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply un-American. But after the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long. Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really did not want us to know but also why they didn’t want us to know it. Culling this research and carefully examining a series of pivotal moments in recent history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy— especially incompetence and criminality—and how rampant overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly vital information. What results is an astonishing study of power: of the greed it enables, of the negligence it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. A crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation’s archives, The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future.
Download or read book A Companion to Dwight D Eisenhower written by Chester J. Pach and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Dwight D. Eisenhower brings new depth to the historiography of this significant and complex figure, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date depiction of both the man and era. Thoughtfully incorporates new and significant literature on Dwight D. Eisenhower Thoroughly examines both the Eisenhower era and the man himself, broadening the historical scope by which Eisenhower is understood and interpreted Presents a complete picture of Eisenhower’s many roles in historical context: the individual, general, president, politician, and citizen This Companion is the ideal starting point for anyone researching America during the Eisenhower years and an invaluable guide for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in history, political science, and policy studies Meticulously edited by a leading authority on the Eisenhower presidency with chapters by international experts on political, international, social, and cultural history
Download or read book The Rise of the G I Army 1940 1941 written by Paul Dickson and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A must-read book that explores a vital pre-war effort [with] deep research and gripping writing.” —Washington Times In The rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941, Paul Dickson tells the dramatic story of how the American Army was mobilized from scattered outposts two years before Pearl Harbor into the disciplined and mobile fighting force that helped win World War II. In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II, America had strong isolationist leanings. The US Army stood at fewer than 200,000 men—unprepared to defend the country, much less carry the fight to Europe and the Far East. And yet, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the American army led the Allied invasion of North Africa, beginning the campaign that would defeat Germany, and the Navy and Marines were fully engaged with Japan in the Pacific. Dickson chronicles this transformation from Franklin Roosevelt’s selection of George C. Marshall to be Army Chief of Staff to the remarkable peace-time draft of 1940 and the massive and unprecedented mock battles in Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Carolinas by which the skill and spirit of the Army were forged and out of which iconic leaders like Eisenhower, Bradley, and Clark emerged. The narrative unfolds against a backdrop of political and cultural isolationist resistance and racial tension at home, and the increasingly perceived threat of attack from both Germany and Japan.
Download or read book The Longest Rescue written by Glenn Robins and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While serving as a crew chief aboard a U.S. Air Force Rescue helicopter, Airman First Class William A. Robinson was shot down and captured in Ha Tinh Province, North Vietnam, on September 20, 1965. After a brief stint at the "Hanoi Hilton," Robinson endured 2,703 days in multiple North Vietnamese prison camps, including the notorious Briarpatch and various compounds at Cu Loc, known by the inmates as the Zoo. No enlisted man in American military history has been held as a prisoner of war longer than Robinson. For seven and a half years, he faced daily privations and endured the full range of North Vietnam's torture program. In The Longest Rescue: The Life and Legacy of Vietnam POW William A. Robinson, Glenn Robins tells Robinson's story using an array of sources, including declassified U.S. military documents, translated Vietnamese documents, and interviews from the National Prisoner of War Museum. Unlike many other POW accounts, this comprehensive biography explores Robinson's life before and after his capture, particularly his estranged relationship with his father, enabling a better understanding of the difficult transition POWs face upon returning home and the toll exacted on their families. Robins's powerful narrative not only demonstrates how Robinson and his fellow prisoners embodied the dedication and sacrifice of America's enlisted men but also explores their place in history and memory.
Download or read book American Military Communities in West Germany written by John W. Lemza and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 28, 1946, a small group of American wives and children arrived at the port of Bremerhaven, West Germany, the first of thousands of military family members to make the trans-Atlantic journey. They were the basis of a network of military communities--"Little Americas"--that would spread across the postwar German landscape. During a 45-year period which included some of the Cold War's tensest moments, their presence confirmed America's resolve to maintain Western democracy in the face of the Soviet threat. Drawing on archival sources and personal narratives, this book explores these enclaves of Americanism, from the U.S. government's perspective to the grassroots view of those who made their homes in Cold War Europe. These families faced many challenges in balancing their military missions with their daily lives during a period of dynamic global change. The author describes interaction in American communities that were sometimes separated, sometimes connected with their German neighbors.
Download or read book The Spiritual Industrial Complex written by Jonathan P. Herzog and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-05 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the perils of the military-industrial complex. But as Jonathan Herzog shows in this insightful history, Eisenhower had spent his presidency contributing to another, lesser known, Cold War collaboration: the spiritual-industrial complex. This fascinating volume shows that American leaders in the early Cold War years considered the conflict to be profoundly religious; they saw Communism not only as godless but also as a sinister form of religion. Fighting faith with faith, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Herzog offers an illuminating account of the resultant spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, the programs, and the policies that became its hallmarks. He shows that well-known actions like the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance were a small part of a much larger and relatively unexplored program that promoted religion nationwide. Herzog shows how these efforts played out in areas of American life both predictable and unexpected--from pulpits and presidential appeals to national faith drives, military training barracks, public school classrooms, and Hollywood epics. Millions of Americans were bombarded with the message that the religious could not be Communists, just a short step from the all-too-common conclusion that the irreligious could not be true Americans. Though the spiritual-industrial complex declined in the 1960s, its statutes, monuments, and sentiments live on as bulwarks against secularism and as reminders that the nation rests upon the groundwork of religious faith. They continue to serve as valuable allies for those defending the place of religion in American life.
Download or read book America s Pastor written by Grant Wacker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-07 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During a career spanning sixty years, the Reverend Billy Graham’s resonant voice and chiseled profile entered the living rooms of millions of Americans with a message that called for personal transformation through God’s grace. How did a lanky farm kid from North Carolina become an evangelist hailed by the media as “America’s pastor”? Why did listeners young and old pour out their grief and loneliness in letters to a man they knew only through televised “Crusades” in faraway places like Madison Square Garden? More than a conventional biography, Grant Wacker’s interpretive study deepens our understanding of why Billy Graham has mattered so much to so many. Beginning with tent revivals in the 1940s, Graham transformed his born-again theology into a moral vocabulary capturing the fears and aspirations of average Americans. He possessed an uncanny ability to appropriate trends in the wider culture and engaged boldly with the most significant developments of his time, from communism and nuclear threat to poverty and civil rights. The enduring meaning of his career, in Wacker’s analysis, lies at the intersection of Graham’s own creative agency and the forces shaping modern America. Wacker paints a richly textured portrait: a self-deprecating servant of God and self-promoting media mogul, a simple family man and confidant of presidents, a plainspoken preacher and the “Protestant pope.” America’s Pastor reveals how this Southern fundamentalist grew, fitfully, into a capacious figure at the center of spiritual life for millions of Christians around the world.
Download or read book Canadian Multiculturalism and the Far Right written by Bàrbara Molas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-08-22 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canadian Multiculturalism and the Far Right examines a neglected aspect of the history of 20th century Canadian multiculturalism and the far right to illuminate the ideological foundations of the concept of ‘third force’. Focusing on the particular thought of ultra-conservative Ukrainian Canadian Walter J. Bossy during his time in Montreal (1931–1970s), this book demonstrates that the idea that Canada was composed of three equally important groups emerged from a context defined by reactionary ideas on ethnic diversity and integration. Two broad questions shape this research: first, what the meaning originally attached to the idea of a ‘third force’ was, and what the intentions behind the conceptualization of a trichotomic Canada were; and second, whether Bossy’s understanding of the ‘third force’ precedes, or is related in any way to, postwar debates on liberal multiculturalism at the core of which was the existence of a ‘third force’. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of multiculturalism, radical-right ideology and the far right, and Canadian history and politics.
Download or read book The Battle for Hearts and Minds in the High North written by Mikael Nilsson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-09-07 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mikael Nilsson offers a detailed and groundbreaking analysis of how the United States Information Agency (USIA) conducted its wide-ranging propaganda campaign in Sweden during the Cold War, 1952–1969. The USIA placed propaganda in the Swedish press, radio, and television as well as schools and universities and established connections to labour leaders, government officials, and journalists. The book also details how the U.S. military financed research at Swedish universities. Nilsson shows how Swedish journalists, scientists, and government officials assisted the USIA in its propaganda efforts --- i.e., co-produced U.S. hegemony in Sweden. The book highlights both the width and the limits of USIA’s propaganda and also relates this theme to Swedish security policy and the secret military cooperation between Sweden and the United States.
Download or read book Twice Armed written by R Alan King, Lt. R. Alan King and published by . This book was released on with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant Colonel R. Alan King and his 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion became operations central after the collapse of the Iraqi army and the beginning of the occupation of Iraq in March 2003. While under his command, these civil affairs and psychological operations soldiers were not content to stay in secure offices inside the green zone. Instead, they knew that to do their job they had to get out and make "house calls," and in the process the 422nd became the most highly decorated civil affairs unit in the history of the U.S. Army, with twenty-one individual awards for valor and five purple hearts. King was particularly well-suited for the new kind of war being waged in Iraq. Armed with his rifle, a Palm Pilot that contained an English translation of the Koran, and an informed and nuanced respect for Middle Eastern culture, King and his team captured or arranged the surrender of almost a dozen of the most-wanted villains from Saddam's regime, including several from the famous deck of cards. He became privy to secrets as weighty as those of Iraq's nuclear weapons program and as light as those behind the outlandish press briefings of the infamous Baghdad Bob. Twice Armed - its title is taken from Plato's maxim We are twice armed if we fight with faith - provides a compelling view of the Iraq war, and the experience from the Iraqi perspective, from one of the war's most decorated officers. The regional expertise that helped King negotiate with clerics and sheikhs also informs his provocative opinions about what it will take to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq, an ancient, mystifying, and deeply religious culture. King has been compared to the legendary T. E. Lawrence, with the press dubbing him “Alan of Arabia,” and this book sheds light on a new and necessary component of modern warfare, one that goes far beyond artillery and armor, and instead tells King's story of cultural interaction and respect that yielded results in his area at the beginning of the war. A trenchant and necessary look at how the winning of the hearts and minds of people in Iraq is as crucial to success as the winning of tactical military goals.
Download or read book Elvis s Army written by Brian McAllister Linn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the U.S. Army drafted Elvis Presley in 1958, it quickly set about transforming the King of Rock and Roll from a rebellious teen idol into a clean-cut GI. Trading in his gold-trimmed jacket for standard-issue fatigues, Elvis became a model soldier in an army facing the unprecedented challenge of building a fighting force for the Atomic Age. In an era that threatened Soviet-American thermonuclear annihilation, the army declared it could limit atomic warfare to the battlefield. It not only adopted a radically new way of fighting but also revamped its equipment, organization, concepts, and training practices. From massive garrisons in Germany and Korea to nuclear tests to portable atomic weapons, the army reinvented itself. Its revolution in warfare required an equal revolution in personnel: the new army needed young officers and soldiers who were highly motivated, well trained, and technologically adept. Drafting Elvis demonstrated that even this icon of youth culture was not too cool to wear the army’s uniform. The army of the 1950s was America’s most racially and economically egalitarian institution, providing millions with education, technical skills, athletics, and other opportunities. With the cooperation of both the army and the media, military service became a common theme in television, music, and movies, and part of this generation’s identity. Brian Linn traces the origins, evolution, and ultimate failure of the army’s attempt to transform itself for atomic warfare, revealing not only the army’s vital role in creating Cold War America but also the experiences of its forgotten soldiers.
