Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, Revised Edition

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, Revised Edition PDF Author: Edwin Moise
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682474488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
On July 31, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731) began a reconnaissance cruise off the coast of North Vietnam. On August 2, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the ship. On the night of August 4, the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy (DD-951), expecting to be attacked, saw what they interpreted as hostile torpedo boats on their radars and reported themselves under attack. The following day, the United States bombed North Vietnam in retaliation. Congress promptly passed, almost unanimously and with little debate, a resolution granting President Lyndon Johnson authority to take “all necessary measures” to deal with aggression in Vietnam. The incident of August 4, 1964, is at the heart of this book. The author interviewed numerous Americans who were present. Most believed in the moment that an attack was occurring. By the time they were interviewed, there were more doubters than believers, but the ones who still believed were more confident in their opinions. Factoring in degree of assurance, one could say that the witnesses were split right down the middle on this fundamental question. A careful and rigorous examination of the other forms of evidence, including intercepted North Vietnamese naval communications, interrogations of North Vietnamese torpedo boat personnel captured later in the war, and the destroyers’ detailed records of the location and duration of radar contacts, lead the author to conclude that no attack occurred that night.

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War PDF Author: Edwin E. Moïse
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807863483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Retracing the confused pattern of planning for escalation of the Vietnam War, Moise reconstructs the events of the night of August 4, 1964, when the U.S. Navy destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy reported that they were under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Using declassified records and interviews with the participants, Moise demonstrates that there was no North Vietnamese attack; the original report was a genuine mistake.

The Gulf of Tonkin

The Gulf of Tonkin PDF Author: Tal Tovy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317431995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The Gulf of Tonkin: The United States and the Escalation in the Vietnam War analyzes the events that led to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam and increased American involvement. On August 4, 1964, the captains of two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, reported that their ships were being attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This report came on top of a previous report by the captain of the USS Maddox, indicating that he had been attacked by torpedo boats two nights earlier. The text introduces readers to the historiography of these incidents and how the perception of the events changed over time. The attacks, which were collectively called the Gulf of Tonkin incident, are presented in the context not only of the Vietnam War but also of the Cold War and U.S. government powers, enabling students to understand the events’ full ramifications. Using essential primary documents, Tal Tovy provides an accessible introduction to a vital turning point in U.S. and international affairs. This book will be useful to all students of the Vietnam War, American military history, and foreign policy history.

Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War

Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War PDF Author: Edwin E. Moïse
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
This historical dictionary, presenting significant persons, armed units, battles and confrontations, weapons and places deals with military and political aspects of the Vietnam War and with the events that led up to it.

Modern China

Modern China PDF Author: Edwin E. Moise
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317868439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The past hundred years in China have seen almost continuous transformation and upheaval. From Confucianist monarchy to warlordism, from fanatically doctrinaire socialist tyranny to almost doctrineless social-capitalism, China has experienced political, cultural and economic disintegration, reunion, and revolution on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the overthrow of the Emperor in 1911, Moise guides us through a century of ever-unfolding drama with characteristic clarity and balance. Examining the effects of the communist revolution, he argues that in the early days Mao Zedong established the most effective government China had ever known, and that even during the bizarre excesses and blood-letting of the Cultural Revolution, there were still issues that were dealt with in a rational and effective manner. Moving on to the developments since the death of Mao in 1976, in a section fully revised and updated for this new edition, Moise gives a nuanced account of the two sides of China: its spectacularly successful programme of capitalist economic development, and its continuing dictatorship. He contends that dictatorship is now much less total than it was until the mid-70s; although dissenters are still persecuted, their very existence is evidence of a significant loosening of repression. However, there is a heavy price being paid for the Chinese economic miracle. The environmental effects of this boom already stretch well beyond the borders of China. Modern Chinasends us a clear message: the rapid and fundamental change that has framed the last century has not slowed or stalled but acts as a pointer to the near certainty of significant further change. To understand China’s future we must understand its past. Edwin E. Moise is Professor of History at Clemson University, South Carolina and a specialist in the history of China and Vietnam. His previous works include Land Reform in China and North Vietnam(1983) and Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (1996).

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, Revised Edition

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, Revised Edition PDF Author: Edwin Moise
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682474488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

Get Book Here

Book Description
On July 31, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731) began a reconnaissance cruise off the coast of North Vietnam. On August 2, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the ship. On the night of August 4, the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy (DD-951), expecting to be attacked, saw what they interpreted as hostile torpedo boats on their radars and reported themselves under attack. The following day, the United States bombed North Vietnam in retaliation. Congress promptly passed, almost unanimously and with little debate, a resolution granting President Lyndon Johnson authority to take “all necessary measures” to deal with aggression in Vietnam. The incident of August 4, 1964, is at the heart of this book. The author interviewed numerous Americans who were present. Most believed in the moment that an attack was occurring. By the time they were interviewed, there were more doubters than believers, but the ones who still believed were more confident in their opinions. Factoring in degree of assurance, one could say that the witnesses were split right down the middle on this fundamental question. A careful and rigorous examination of the other forms of evidence, including intercepted North Vietnamese naval communications, interrogations of North Vietnamese torpedo boat personnel captured later in the war, and the destroyers’ detailed records of the location and duration of radar contacts, lead the author to conclude that no attack occurred that night.

The Myths of Tet

The Myths of Tet PDF Author: Edwin Moïse
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 070062502X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
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.

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 PDF Author: Pierre Asselin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520287495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
"Using new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese sources as well as French, British, Canadian and American archives, Pierre Asselin sheds valuable light on Hanoi's path to war. Step by step the narrative makes Hanoi's revolutionary strategy from the end of the French Indochina War to the start of the Anti-American Resistance Struggle for Reunification and National Salvation (the Vietnam War) transparent. The book reveals how North Vietnamese leaders moved from a cautious policy emphasizing nonviolent political and diplomatic struggle to a far riskier pursuit of military victory"--

Lessons in Disaster

Lessons in Disaster PDF Author: Gordon M. Goldstein
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805079718
Category : National security
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
11th Subejct: National Security -- United States-- 20th century.

Vietnam

Vietnam PDF Author: Michael Maclear
Publisher: Methuen
ISBN: 9780423005806
Category : Indochinese War, 1946-1954
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description


Truth is the First Casualty

Truth is the First Casualty PDF Author: Joseph C. Goulden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Tonkin Gulf Incidents, 1964
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Author's note: Historians who walk through what the late President Kennedy called the "minefield" of contemporary events must tread carefully lest their own reputations, or those of perons about whom they write, be blown skyward by misstatement or misinterpretation. Truth is the First Casualty is a reconstruction of an event that will remain politically volatile for years; unsurprisingly therefore, the Johnson Adminsitration and its officials are anxious that as little as possible be said about it. ... Arlington, Virginia, April 16, 1969 [page 1].