Autopsy Of An Unwinnable War

Author : William C. Haponski
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504059123
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Autopsy of an Unwinnable War: Vietnam written by William C. Haponski and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Author : William C. Haponski
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781612007205
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Autopsy of an Unwinnable War written by William C. Haponski and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Elan Journo
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739135422
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Winning the Unwinnable War written by Elan Journo and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight years after 9/11 and in the shadow of two protracted U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East, the enemy is not only undefeated but emboldened and resurgent. What went wrong_and what should we do going forward? Winning the Unwinnable War shows how our own policy ideas led to 9/11 and then crippled our response in the Middle East, and it makes the case for an unsettling conclusion: By subordinating military victory to perverse, allegedly moral constraints, Washington's policy has undermined our national security. Owing to the significant influence of Just War Theory and neoconservatism, the Bush administration consciously put the imperative of shielding civilians and bringing them elections above the goal of eliminating real threats to our security. Consequently, this policy left our enemies stronger, and America weaker, than before. The dominant alternative to Bush-esque idealism in foreign policy_so-called realism_has made a strong comeback under the tenure of Barack Obama. But this nonjudgmental, supposedly practical approach is precisely what helped unleash the enemy prior to 9/11. The message of the essays in this thematic collection is that only by radically re-thinking our foreign policy in the Middle East can we achieve victory over the enemy that attacked us on 9/11. We need a new moral foundation for our Mideast policy. That new starting point for U.S. policy is the moral ideal championed by the philosopher Ayn Rand: rational self-interest. Implementing this approach entails objectively defining our national interest as protecting the lives and freedoms of Americans_and then taking principled action to safeguard them. The book lays out the necessary steps for achieving victory and for securing America's long-range interests in the volatile Middle East.

Author : Adam Wunische
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509554866
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unwinnable Wars written by Adam Wunische and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-11-08 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In nine short days, Taliban forces destroyed two decades of American armed statebuilding in Afghanistan. This was no isolated failure. Over the last century, almost every attempt to intervene militarily to prop up or reconstruct an allied state has seen similar dismal outcomes. Why? This book answers that fundamental question. By exploring the factors that hindered success in Afghanistan, Adam Wunische identifies forces common to other unsuccessful U.S. armed statebuilding missions, from Vietnam to Syria, Haiti to Iraq. These forces, he argues, inherently favor insurgencies, forfeit sustainability for quick results, and create dependencies and corruption – all of which undermine the goal of building a state that can stand on its own. Not only that, but most of these forces are inescapable and uncontrollable. This means any future attempts at armed statebuilding will likely also be unwinnable, with costs and consequences far outpacing America’s interests and benefits. Faced with a future likely dominated by proxy wars, Wunische offers a novel way forward to prevent the U.S. from chasing new wars that it is destined to lose.

Author : Thomas J. Corcoran
Publisher : Casemate
ISBN 13 : 1636243681
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Turning Points written by Thomas J. Corcoran and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Details how the U.S. State Department attempted, and failed, to save South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression and the powerful domestic political influences that ultimately led to America’s defeat. Ten years after the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a career Foreign Service officer, Thomas J. Corcoran, set down in writing his thoughts on the history of US State Department policy during America’s involvement with South Vietnam. Like many Americans of his generation, he was perplexed by the failure of America to achieve its goals in South Vietnam. As an ambassador and with over 30 years of diplomatic experience—beginning in 1948 when he was assigned to Hanoi and involving other postings in Southeast Asia—he brought to his analysis a long and rich personal experience with events in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The result is a thoughtful, objective and well-researched study that chronicles the key policy decisions made by the US State Department throughout the entire period from 1945 to 1975; decisions that ultimately led to the first war lost by the United States. In his extensive study, Corcoran does an excellent job of exposing many of the myths and falsehoods found in orthodox histories of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Author : Ingo Trauschweizer
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813177014
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Maxwell Taylor's Cold War written by Ingo Trauschweizer and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-04-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Maxwell Taylor served at the nerve centers of US military policy and Cold War strategy and experienced firsthand the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as crises in Berlin and Cuba. Along the way he became an adversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nuclear deterrence strategy and a champion of President John F. Kennedy's shift toward Flexible Response. Taylor also remained a public critic of defense policy and civil-military relations into the 1980s and was one of the most influential American soldiers, strategists, and diplomats. However, many historians describe him as a politicized, dishonest manipulator whose actions deeply affected the national security establishment and had lasting effects on civil-military relations in the United States. In Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam, author Ingo Trauschweizer traces the career of General Taylor, a Kennedy White House insider and architect of American strategy in Vietnam. Working with newly accessible and rarely used primary sources, including the Taylor Papers and government records from the Cold War crisis, Trauschweizer describes and analyzes this polarizing figure in American history. The major themes of Taylor's career, how to prepare the armed forces for global threats and localized conflicts and how to devise sound strategy and policy for a full spectrum of threats, remain timely and the concerns he raised about the nature of the national security apparatus have not been resolved.

Author : Thomas Sanders
Publisher : Casemate
ISBN 13 : 161200704X
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Vietnam War Portraits written by Thomas Sanders and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2020-02-29 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume honors those who experienced the Vietnam War through striking portraits and personal accounts of the conflict and its repercussions. This book offers a uniquely human perspective on the Vietnam War through portraits and stories of American veterans, southern Vietnamese veterans, and civilians. The surreal imagery of Thomas Sanders’ photography encourages the viewer to take a closer look at those who experienced the war. These images are paired with the individuals’ haunting, inspirational, and sometimes comical stories of the war. Set in a surreal jungle environment, the portraits evoke the sense of darkness and uncertainty felt by those who experienced the war. Some portrait subjects hold objects that evoke their time of service: the common cigarette pack smoked by the vets while in the jungle; a homemade grenade made by the northern Vietnamese; and the “order to report” document that changed many a life.

Author : Craig Whitlock
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982159014
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Afghanistan Papers written by Craig Whitlock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 ​The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

Author : Marc Phillip Yablonka
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1612006884
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Vietnam Báo Chí written by Marc Phillip Yablonka and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A military journalist shines a light on the unsung heroism and contributions of enlisted combat reporters in the Vietnam War in these revealing interviews. Vietnam Bao Chi brings together interviews with thirty-five combat correspondents who reported on the Vietnam War. These brave men and women wrote the stories, captured the images, and filmed the television coverage of their fellow servicepeople on battlefields from the Mekong Delta to the DMZ and from the Tet Offensive in 1968 to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Here you will meet Marine Dale Dye, who would go on to play an integral role in the making of the film Platoon; Green Beret Jim Morris, whose books, including War Story, recount the combat operations of Special Forces units in the Central Highlands; John Del Vecchio, whose classic work of fiction, The 13th Valley, mirrors his own existence as a combat correspondent with the 101st Airborne Division; and US Navy Frogman Chip Maury, renowned for his free-fall and underwater photography in Vietnam. Yablonka’s extensive experience as a military journalist brought him into contact with many of these combat correspondents, giving him a unique insight into their professions and lives. This book honors these brave chroniclers in uniform who brought the Vietnam War home to us. “[This] valuable collection of profiles . . . shines light on the all-but-forgotten role of American military báo chí (press in Vietnamese)." —Publishers Weekly

Author : Keith M. Nightingale
Publisher : Casemate
ISBN 13 : 1612007864
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Just Another Day in Vietnam written by Keith M. Nightingale and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2019-10-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This military memoir examines one of the most vicious and tragically forgotten battles of the Vietnam War from a variety of perspectives. In June of 1967, the Viet Cong sought to isolate and destroy an elite South Vietnamese unit as part of a new offensive strategy. They sent a voluntary POW as an “informant” to dupe the 52nd Vietnamese Ranger Battalion into taking a dangerous position in the III Corps sector of South Vietnam. In the midst of an ambush, the members of the 52nd Ranger Battalion conducted themselves with great skill and valor. As one of those men, Keith Nightingale is uniquely suited to relate the events of that day. Based on firsthand experience as well as After Action Reports from a variety of sources, Just Another Day in Vietnam explores multiple perspectives, affording equal weight to ally and enemy alike. Nightingale offers rare insight into the often misunderstood role of the elite Vietnamese Ranger forces; the intelligence acquired from captured Rangers; and a rare eyewitness account to this fateful yet underexamined Vietnam battle.