Download or read book Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam written by Lloyd C. Gardner and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by Christian G. Appy, Andrew J. Bacevich, John Prados, and others offer “history at its best, meaning, at its most useful.” —Howard Zinn From the launch of the “Shock and Awe” invasion in March 2003 through President George W. Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” two months later, the war in Iraq was meant to demonstrate definitively that the United States had learned the lessons of Vietnam. This new book makes clear that something closer to the opposite is true—that US foreign policy makers have learned little from the past, even as they have been obsessed with the “Vietnam Syndrome.” Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam brings together the country’s leading historians of the Vietnam experience. Examining the profound changes that have occurred in the country and the military since the Vietnam War, this book assembles a distinguished group to consider how America found itself once again in the midst of a quagmire—and the continuing debate about the purpose and exercise of American power. Also includes contributions from: Alex Danchev * David Elliott * Elizabeth L. Hillman * Gabriel Kolko * Walter LaFeber * Wilfried Mausbach * Alfred W. McCoy * Gareth Porter “Essential.” —Bill Moyers

Download or read book Vietnam in Iraq written by David Ryan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-01-24 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than most post-1970 conflicts involving US forces, the conflict in Iraq has been fought out against a background of frequently invoked memories from the era of the Vietnam War. The essays in this book offer a series of perspectives on connections and parallels between the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of, and conflict in, Iraq. The contributors particularly examine the impact of the Vietnam analogy on the War in Iraq, assessing the military tactical lessons learned from the Vietnam War and exploring the influence and persistence of its legacy in US politics, culture and diplomacy. The volume holds up to original interrogation some commonly held assumptions about historical analogy, and several distinguished authorities on the Vietnam War era, in particular, offer their thoughts on the value and applicability of Vietnam-Iraq parallels. If most contributions point out some obvious dissimilarities between the two eras, notably the transformed post-Cold War international environment, the similarities, particularly those relating to the problems of cultural misunderstanding, are also apparent. Vietnam in Iraq will be of great interest for all students and researchers of the Iraq War, strategic studies, international relations and American politics.

Download or read book Not Even Past written by David Fitzgerald and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers essential perspectives on the Cold War and post-9/11 eras and explores the troubling implications of the American tendency to fight wars without end. “Featuring lucid and penetrating essays by a stellar roster of scholars, the volume provides deep insights into one of the grand puzzles of the age: why the U.S. has so often failed to exit wars on its terms.”— Fredrik Logevall, Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: Taken together, these conflicts are the key to understanding more than a half century of American military history. In addition, they have shaped, in profound ways, the culture and politics of the United States—as well as the nations in which they have been fought. This volume brings together international experts on American history and foreign affairs to assess the cumulative impact of the United States’ often halting and conflicted attempts to end wars. From the introduction: The refusal to engage in historical thinking, that form of reflection deeply immersed in the US experience of war and intervention, means that this cultural amnesia is related to a strategic incoherence and, in these wars, the United States has failed in its strategic objectives because it did not define, precisely, what they were. If Vietnam was the tragedy, Iraq and Afghanistan were repeated failures. The objectives and the national interests were elusive beyond issues of credibility, identity, and revenge; the end point was undefined because it was not clear what the point was. What did the United States want from these wars? What did it want to leave behind?

Download or read book America s War against Global Jihad written by William R. Nester and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A specter haunts America, the specter of Global Jihad, Islamic Holy War. This specter was never more horrific than on September 11, 2001, when nineteen fanatics hijacked four jetliners and used them as guided missiles to destroy the twin World Trade Towers, damage the Pentagon, murder nearly 3,000 people, and cause as much as several hundred billion dollars’ worth of direct and indirect damage to New York City and the national economy. But Jihadists have periodically attacked Americans ever since November 1979, when mobs shouting death to America overran the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 officials hostage for 444 days. President George W. Bush responded to the September 11 atrocities by declaring a global war on terror. Now in its second decade, that war has cost the United States thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Americans are haunted by horrific televised images from across a swath of the Muslim world of bomb-blasted cities, hundreds of slaughtered bodies, thousands of refugees huddled in squalid camps, and American journalists in orange jump suits kneeling in the desert before the black robed and masked men who will behead them. Americans increasingly question whether the global war on terror has been worth those costs for their own nation and the lands where it is fought. This book analyzes America’s crusade against Jihadism. The key related questions it addresses are these: Looking back, what were the successes and failures of Washington’s counter-Jihadist strategy before and after September 11? Looking ahead, should Americans stay the course or cut their losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? Was the catastrophic September 11 attack a one-time event or could its equivalent or worse in death and destruction happen again? Renowned Harvard professor Samuel Huntington asserted that: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam, a different civilization, whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” Is that true? Just what of Muhammad’s words and deeds, if any, justifies the barbarism of al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other Jihadists? Finally, just how corporeal is that specter of global Jihad to the United States? A startling surprise awaits the reader in the final chapter as acclaimed expert William Nester weighs the specter of global Jihad against an array of other national security threats.

Download or read book Allies at Odds written by Eugenie M. Blang and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-04-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Allies at Odds examines America's Vietnam policy from 1961 to 1968 in an international context by focusing on the United States' relationship with its European partners France, West Germany, and Great Britain. The European response to America's Vietnam policy provides a framework to assess this important chapter in recent American history within the wider perspective of international relations. Equally significant, the respective approaches to the "Vietnam question" by the Europeans and Americans reveal the ongoing challenge for nation-states of transcending narrowly defined state-centered policies for a global perspective pursuant of common goals among the trans-Atlantic allies. Blang explores the failure of France, West Germany, and Great Britain to significantly influence American policy-making.

Download or read book Looking Back on the Vietnam War written by Brenda M. Boyle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than forty years have passed since the official end of the Vietnam War, yet the war’s legacies endure. Its history and iconography still provide fodder for film and fiction, communities of war refugees have spawned a wide Vietnamese diaspora, and the United States military remains embroiled in unwinnable wars with eerie echoes of Vietnam. Looking Back on the Vietnam War brings together scholars from a broad variety of disciplines, who offer fresh insights on the war’s psychological, economic, artistic, political, and environmental impacts. Each essay examines a different facet of the war, from its representation in Marvel comic books to the experiences of Vietnamese soldiers exposed to Agent Orange. By putting these pieces together, the contributors assemble an expansive yet nuanced composite portrait of the war and its global legacies. Though they come from diverse scholarly backgrounds, ranging from anthropology to film studies, the contributors are united in their commitment to original research. Whether exploring rare archives or engaging in extensive interviews, they voice perspectives that have been excluded from standard historical accounts. Looking Back on the Vietnam War thus embarks on an interdisciplinary and international investigation to discover what we remember about the war, how we remember it, and why.

Download or read book The Power of the Past written by Hal Brands and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars and policymakers explore how history influences foreign policy and offer insights on how the study of the past can more usefully serve the present. History, with its insights, analogies, and narratives, is central to the ways that the United States interacts with the world. Historians and policymakers, however, rarely engage one another as effectively or fruitfully as they might. This book bridges that divide, bringing together leading scholars and policymakers to address the essential questions surrounding the history-policy relationship including Mark Lawrence on the numerous, and often contradictory, historical lessons that American observers have drawn from the Vietnam War; H. W. Brands on the role of analogies in U.S. policy during the Persian Gulf crisis and war of 1990–91; and Jeremi Suri on Henry Kissinger's powerful use of history.

Download or read book The Vietnam War written by Brenda M. Boyle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reverberations of the Vietnam War can still be felt in American culture. The post-9/11 United States forays into the Middle East, the invasion and occupation of Iraq especially, have evoked comparisons to the nearly two decades of American presence in Viet Nam (1954-1973). That evocation has renewed interest in the Vietnam War, resulting in the re-printing of older War narratives and the publication of new ones. This volume tracks those echoes as they appear in American, Vietnamese American, and Vietnamese war literature, much of which has joined the American literary canon. Using a wide range of theoretical approaches, these essays analyze works by Michael Herr, Bao Ninh, Duong Thu Huong, Bobbie Ann Mason, le thi diem thuy, Tim O'Brien, Larry Heinemann, and newcomers Denis Johnson, Karl Marlantes, and Tatjana Solis. Including an historical timeline of the conflict and annotated guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for students and readers of contemporary American fiction

Download or read book Representations of War Migration and Refugeehood written by Daniel H. Rellstab and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War, migration, and refugeehood are inextricably linked and the complex nature of all three phenomena offers profound opportunities for representation and misrepresentation. This volume brings together international contributors and practitioners from a wide range of fields, practices, and backgrounds to explore and problematize textual and visual inscriptions of war and migration in the arts, the media, and in academic, public, and political discourses. The essays in this collection address the academic and political interest in representations of the migrant and the refugee, and examine the constructed nature of categories and concepts such as ‘war,’ ‘refuge(e),’ ‘victim,’ ‘border,’ ‘home,’ ‘non-place,’ and ‘dis/location.’ Contributing authors engage with some of the most pressing questions surrounding war, migration, and refugeehood as well as with the ways in which war and its multifarious effects and repercussions in society are being framed, propagated, glorified, or contested. This volume initiates an interdisciplinary debate which re-evaluates the relationship between war, migration, and refugeehood and their representations.

Download or read book The Columbia History of the Vietnam War written by David L. Anderson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-05 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's experience in Vietnam continues to figure prominently in debates over strategy and defense and within the discourse on the identity of the United States as a nation. Through fifteen essays rooted in recent scholarship, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War is a chronological and critical collective history central to any discussion of America's interests abroad.David Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War's major themes and enduring relevance. Mark Philip Bradley (University of Chicago) reexamines the rise of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism and the Vietminh-led war against French colonialism. Richard Immerman (Temple University) revisits Eisenhower's and Kennedy's efforts at nation-building in South Vietnam. Gary Hess (Bowling Green State University) reviews America's military commitment under Kennedy and Johnson, and Lloyd Gardner (Rutgers University) investigates the motivations behind Johnson's escalation of force. Robert McMahon (Ohio State University) focuses on the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive, and Jeffrey Kimball (Miami University) makes sense of Nixon's paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war. John Prados (National Security Archive) and Eric Bergerud (Naval Postgraduate School) devote their essays to America's military strategy. Helen Anderson (California State University, Monterey Bay) and Robert Brigham (Vassar College) explore the war's impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture. Melvin Small (Wayne State University) recounts the domestic tensions created by America's involvement in Vietnam, and Kenton Clymer (Northern Illinois University) follows the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia. Concluding essays by Robert Schulzinger (University of Colorado) and George Herring (University of Kentucky) trace the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts and diagnose the symptoms of the "Vietnam Syndrome" evident in later U.S. foreign policy debat.

Download or read book National Security and Core Values in American History written by William O. Walker III and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-06 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon themes from the nation's past, William O. Walker III presents a new interpretation of the history of American exceptionalism.

Download or read book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam written by John Nagl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-10-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances. Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.

Download or read book A Vietnam Trilogy Vol 3 War Trauma written by Raymond M. Scurfield and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A nationally renowned PTSD authority reveals the psychiatric impact of war on soldiers and veterans, dented or minimized by government and the military. Through efforts to treat veterans of past conflicts he illustrates the inevitability of lifelong psychiatric scars from today's conflicts as well.

Download or read book The Long Road to Baghdad written by Lloyd C. Gardner and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The diplomatic historian examines the ideas, policies and actions that led from Vietnam to the Iraq War and America’s disastrous role in the Middle East. “What will stand out one day is not George W. Bush’s uniqueness but the continuum from the Carter doctrine to ‘shock and awe’ in 2003.” —from The Long Road to Baghdad In this revealing narrative of America’s path to its “new longest war,” one of the nation’s premier diplomatic historians excavates the deep historical roots of the US misadventure in Iraq. Lloyd Gardner’s sweeping and authoritative narrative places the Iraq War in the context of US foreign policy since Vietnam, casting the conflict as a chapter in a much broader story—in sharp contrast to the dominant narrative, which focus almost exclusively on the actions of the Bush Administration in the months leading up to the invasion. Gardner illuminates a vital historical thread connecting Walt Whitman Rostow’s defense of US intervention in Southeast Asia, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s attempts to project American power into the “arc of crisis” (with Iran at its center), and the efforts of two Bush administrations, in separate Iraq wars, to establish a “landing zone” in that critically important region. Far more disturbing than a simple conspiracy to secure oil, Gardner’s account explains the Iraq War as the necessary outcome of a half-century of doomed US policies. “A vital primer to the slow-motion conflagration of American foreign policy.” —Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Principles of Asymmetrical Warfare written by Robert Uda and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2007-03 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Principles of Asymmetrical Warfare: How to Beat Islamo-fascists at Their Own Game provides principles, strategies, tactics, and methods available to the Administration in winning and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the War on Terrorism. Some strategies and tactics appear extreme to a civilized country as the United States. However, we should know about and understand these strategies and tactics in case we must use them because the Isfasts are about to annihilate, conquer, or place us in bondage. I have quoted ideas from Sun Tzu, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., and Dr. Michael Savage, a man of great intellect. Our Administration has made a major mistake by not learning from great warriors like Sun Tzu and Gen. Patton. Our Administration makes an even larger mistake by ignoring Michael Savage's thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. Many ideas are common sense, which seems to be lacking in our politicians, Administration, and military generals. Apparently, they do not know how to fight and win an asymmetrical war. "Principles of Asymmetrical Warfare" provides fresh ideas on fighting the Isfasts and winning. Therefore, if you desire to know how to beat the Isfasts at their own game, read Principles of Asymmetrical Warfare.

Download or read book Settle and Conquer written by Matthew J. Flynn and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This rereading of the history of American westward expansion examines the destruction of Native American cultures as a successful campaign of "counterinsurgency." Paramilitary figures such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett "opened the West" and frontiersmen infiltrated the enemy, learning Indian tactics and launching "search and destroy" missions. Conventional military force was a key component but the interchange between militia, regular soldiers, volunteers and frontiersmen underscores the complexity of the conflict and the implementing of a "peace policy." The campaign's outcome rested as much on the civilian population's economic imperatives as any military action. The success of this three-century war of attrition was unparalleled but ultimately saw the victors question the morality of their own actions.

Download or read book Learning to Forget written by David Fitzgerald and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learning to Forget analyzes the evolution of US counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine over the last five decades. Beginning with an extensive section on the lessons of Vietnam, it traces the decline of COIN in the 1970s, then the rebirth of low intensity conflict through the Reagan years, in the conflict in Bosnia, and finally in the campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately it closes the loop by explaining how, by confronting the lessons of Vietnam, the US Army found a way out of those most recent wars. In the process it provides an illustration of how military leaders make use of history and demonstrates the difficulties of drawing lessons from the past that can usefully be applied to contemporary circumstances. The book outlines how the construction of lessons is tied to the construction of historical memory and demonstrates how histories are constructed to serve the needs of the present. In so doing, it creates a new theory of doctrinal development.