Autopsy on People's War

Autopsy on People's War PDF Author: Chalmers Johnson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520025189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description

Autopsy on People's War

Autopsy on People's War PDF Author: Chalmers Johnson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520025189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description


From People’s War to People’s Rule

From People’s War to People’s Rule PDF Author: Timothy J. Lomperis
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807863041
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Timothy Lomperis persuasively argues the ironic point that the lessons of American involvement in Vietnam are not to be found in any analysis of the war by itself. Rather, he proposes a comparison of the Vietnam experience with seven other cases of Western intervention in communist insurgencies during the Cold War era: China, Indochina, Greece, the Philippines, Malaya, Cambodia, and Laos. Lomperis maintains that popular insurgencies are manifestations of crises in political legitimacy, which occur as a result of the societal stresses caused by modernization. Therefore, he argues, any intervention in a 'people's war' will succeed or fail depending on how it affects this crisis. The unifying theme in the cases Lomperis discusses is the power of land reform and electoral democracy to cement political legitimacy and therefore deflect revolutionary movements. Applying this theory to the ongoing Sendero Luminoso insurgency in Peru, Lomperis makes a qualified prediction of that conflict's outcome. He concludes that a global trend toward democratization has produced a new era of 'people's rule.'

Autopsy of War

Autopsy of War PDF Author: John A. Parrish
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429941049
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
On the outside, John Parrish is a highly successful doctor, having risen to the top of his field as department head at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Inside, however, he was so tortured by the memories of his tour of duty as a marine battlefield doctor in Vietnam that he was unable to live a normal life. In Autopsy of War, the author delivers an unflinching narrative chronicling his four-decade battle with the unseen enemy in his own mind as he struggled with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Parrish examines his Southern Baptist childhood and the profound influence of his father, a fire and brimstone preacher turned Navy chaplain, while offering a candid assessment of the "God and Country" ethos that leads young men to rush wide-eyed into war. He describes the unimaginable carnage and acts of cruelty he witnessed in Vietnam, experiences that shattered his world view leaving him to retreat from his family upon his return stateside. Living virtually homeless at times, he visited veteran shelters and relived the horrors of war in a series of harrowing flashbacks as he dealt with suicidal thoughts. The author writes honestly and probingly of his episodes of infidelity and battles with sex addiction. Readers follow his steady journey toward recovery and his professional contributions in the field of medicine and technology, as well as a joint program with the Boston Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital to aid returning veterans. Perhaps most poignantly, Parrish speaks of his quest to discover the identity of one particular solider in Vietnam he could not save—and whose memory has haunted him ever since. Autopsy of War is a soul searching memoir that is both an intensely personal narrative and a universally relevant trip through the world of war and recovery.

Autopsy of an Unwinnable War: Vietnam

Autopsy of an Unwinnable War: Vietnam PDF Author: William C. Haponski
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504059123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
A military studies professor and former combatant “rationally dissects the strategies and mindsets on both sides” of this thirty-year conflict (New York Journal of Books). Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, there have been much discussion of why (and whether) America lost the war in Vietnam. The common belief is that the war was lost not on the battlefield but in Washington, DC. 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 narrative of the entire thirty-year war, this book seeks to explain why. Written by a combatant in six large battles and many smaller firefights who was also a leader with a full range of pacification duties, a commander who lost forty-three wonderful young men, Autopsy of an Unwinnable War is the result of a quest for answers by one who, after decades of wondering what it was all about, turned to a years-long search of French, American, and Vietnamese sources. This is a story lived and revealed mainly 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 who were living it. 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 that would eventually triumph over bullets. Includes photographs

Problems of Communism

Problems of Communism PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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On Strategy

On Strategy PDF Author: Harry G. Summers
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307558762
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Stunning in its insight, On Strategy is required reading not just for everyone who is interested in the Vietnam War, but for anyone who is concerned about the place of the United States on the world stage and how America can, and more importantly cannot, employ its immense military force to help bring peace to an increasingly troubled world. “On Stategy is just about the best thing I have read on Vietnam.”—Drew Middleton, The New York Times “Perhaps the most trenchant single postmortem to date of our defeat in Vietnam . . . a classic . . . compact, subtle—and surprisingly readable.”—Newsweek “At our house, we sleep less easily now that Harry G. Summers Jr., Colonel of Infantry, is no longer defending us. After two wars and 38 years of active duty, Summers has retired from the Army. . . . Every taxpayer should mourn his loss. Colonel Summers is perhaps the most influential thinker of our time: his book On Strategy is required reading at the Army and Naval War Colleges.”—Jack Beatty, Boston Globe “This investigation of the U.S. army’s role in the Vietnam War is widely recognized as the single most useful postmortem on the unpopular war.”—The Washington Post Book World “The most detailed exposition of this view—that the U.S. threw away whatever chance for victory it may have had through blunders that must not be repeated—comes from Col. Harry Summers, whose book, On Strategy, has become must reading for young officers.”—Time “A masterful analysis of the strategy, or lack thereof, in the Vietnam War . . . The best critique of the war I have read and a book every policy maker in Washington should absorb.”—Max Cleland, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Control War

The Control War PDF Author: Martin G. Clemis
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806161205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
The Vietnam War—a conflict defined by an ever-evolving mixture of conventional and guerrilla warfare and mass politics—has often been called a “war without fronts.” In fact, Vietnam had a multitude of fronts, as insurgents and counterinsurgents wrestled for control throughout 44 provinces, 250 districts, and more than 11,000 hamlets. In The Control War, Martin G. Clemis focuses on South Vietnam, where a highly complex politico-military struggle fragmented the battlefield along countless divergent points of conflict as both sides sought spatial and political hegemony. Complicating the conventional view that the Vietnam War was about winning “hearts and minds,” Clemis argues that both sides were more interested in asserting control over the people—and resources—of the countryside. As in other revolutionary civil conflicts, the key to winning political power in South Vietnam was to control the physical world of territory, population, and resources, as well as the ideational world of political organization and long-term legitimacy. Despite their countervailing purposes, both insurgency and pacification provided the means to exert this control. Proponents of each approach pursued the same goals, relying on a blend of military force, political violence, and socioeconomic policy to achieve them. Revealing the unique spatiality of the Vietnam War, The Control War analyzes the ways that both sides of the conflict conceptualized and used geography and the environment to serve strategic, tactical, and political ends. Clemis shows us that the operational environment of Vietnam, both natural and human-made, was far more than a backdrop to two decades of war.

War's Logic

War's Logic PDF Author: Antulio J. Echevarria II
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009038281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Antulio J. Echevarria II reveals how successive generations of American strategic theorists have thought about war. Analyzing the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Billy Mitchell, Bernard Brodie, Robert Osgood, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, Henry Eccles, Joseph Wiley, Harry Summers, John Boyd, William Lind, and John Warden, he uncovers the logic that underpinned each theorist's critical concepts, core principles, and basic assumptions about the nature and character of war. In so doing, he identifies four paradigms of war's nature - traditional, modern, political, and materialist - that have shaped American strategic thought. If war's logic is political, as Carl von Clausewitz said, then so too is thinking about war.

Revolution and World Politics

Revolution and World Politics PDF Author: Fred Halliday
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1349277029
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
The relation of revolutions to international relations is central to modern history. Revolutions have, as much as war or nationalism, shaped the development of world politics. Equally, revolutions have been, in cause, ideology and consequence, international events. By putting the international politics of revolution centre stage, Fred Halliday's book makes a major contribution to the understanding of both revolution and world politics.

The Law of War

The Law of War PDF Author: Ingrid Detter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317026071
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 813

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Book Description
The third edition of Ingrid Detter's authoritative work explores the changing legal context of modern warfare in light of events over the last decade. Ingrid Detter reviews the status of non-State actors, as individuals and groups become more prominent in international society. Covering post 9/11 events and the resulting changes in the ethos of war, the author analyses the role of military companies and examines what their legitimacy means for international society. The edition also discusses certain ’intrinsic’ rules in the Law of War, such as rules giving individuals the right to be spared genocide, torture, slavery and apartheid and assure them basic democratic rights. The author questions the right of ’illegal’ combatants to be treated as prisoners of war and suggests that a minimum standard must be afforded to all, whether captured dictators or detainees suspected of terrorism. In the modern world, the individual (the soldier, the civilian, the dictator, the terrorist or the pirate) can no longer behave as they wish. Further new topics include 'target killings', the ’right to protect’ (’R2P’, - claimed to be a new form of intervention), the use of unregulated weapons such as drones and robots, the war scenario in Outer Space and cyber crimes. There is also a discussion of new developments in the field of war crimes including severe criticism of the novel concept 'joint criminal enterprise' (JCE), which, in the opinion of the author, undermines the Rule of Law. This updated and expanded edition will be of use to statesmen, scholars and students of international relations and international law.