Quagmire

Author : David Andrew Biggs
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295801549
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quagmire written by David Andrew Biggs and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam’s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam’s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1-UItZqsk

Author : Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108486762
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quagmire in Civil War written by Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebuts the pervasive 'folk' notion that quagmire is intrinsic to a country or civil war. Shows that quagmire is made, not found.

Author : Donald Anderson
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1640124527
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quagmire written by Donald Anderson and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quagmire shares a range of voices—men and women, military and civilian—and a range of perspectives from the homeland, the combat zone, and war’s aftermath covering fifteen years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Author : David Halberstam
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742560086
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Making of a Quagmire written by David Halberstam and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam's eyewitness account provides a riveting narrative of how the United States created a major foreign policy disaster for itself in a faraway land it knew little about. In the introduction to this edition, historian Daniel J. Singal supplies crucial background information that was unavailable in the mid-1960s when the book was written. With its numerous firsthand recollections of life in the war zone, The Making of a Quagmire penetrates to the essence of what went wrong in Vietnam. Although its focus is the Kennedy era, its analysis of the blunders and misconceptions of American military and political leaders holds true for the entire war.

Author : Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108775896
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quagmire in Civil War written by Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding of civil war is shot through with the spectre of quagmire, a situation that traps belligerents, compounding and entrenching war's dangers. Despite the subject's importance, its causes are obscure. A pervasive 'folk' notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars has foreclosed inquiry, and scholarship has failed to identify quagmire as an object of study in its own right. Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006. The results make clear that the 'folk' notion misdiagnoses quagmire and demand that we revisit policies that rest upon it. Schulhofer-Wohl demonstrates that quagmire is made, not found.

Author : Linda Steaveson
Publisher : Saguaro Books, LLC
ISBN 13 : 1545722676
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quagmire's Test written by Linda Steaveson and published by Saguaro Books, LLC. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While on a journey to find the final ingredient for her Practically Perfect Parsley Potion, Quagmire Pinch, has a misstep and tumbles down a cliff drawing the attention of a group of gnomes and discovers that in the past their king has killed any and all witches who have stumbled upon his hidden kingdom. She earns the trust of her newfound friends, who allow her to join them in their gem mine. Trying to help, she offers a reluctant cart-pulling mine rat a treat, causing it to stampede and break a cart wheel. She is seen fixing the wheel by a rather unscrupulous gnome who is spying on her. When the king finds out she is a witch, she is thrown into the dungeon. While there, she discovers a diary within a wall detailing the imprisonment of another witch the king had imprisoned very long ago and revealing the king is a usurper. She devises a plan and eventually makes a bargain with the false king to feed his vanity and is released. A spell for him goes awry and a war begins. Will the rightful king be able to take his place to rule Gnometopia?

Author : Kenneth J. Campbell
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317251040
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tale of Two Quagmires written by Kenneth J. Campbell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Iraq becoming another Vietnam? Author Kenneth Campbell received a Purple Heart after serving 13 months in Vietnam. He then spent years campaigning to get the US out of the war. Here, Campbell lays out the political similarities of both wars. He traces the chief lessons of Vietnam, which helped America successfully avoid quagmires for thirty years, and explains how neoconservatives within the Bush administration cynically used the tragedy of 9/11 to override the "Vietnam syndrome" and drag America into a new quagmire in Iraq. In view of where the U.S. finds itself today -- unable to stay but unable to leave -- Campbell recommends that America re-dedicate itself to the essential lessons of Vietnam: the danger of imperial arrogance, the limits of military force, the importance of international and constitutional law, and the power of morality.

Author : Brian VanDeMark
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195357191
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Into the Quagmire written by Brian VanDeMark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-05-18 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November of 1964, as Lyndon Johnson celebrated his landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the government of South Vietnam lay in a shambles. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor described it as a country beset by "chronic factionalism, civilian-military suspicion and distrust, absence of national spirit and motivation, lack of cohesion in the social structure, lack of experience in the conduct of government." Virtually no one in the Johnson Administration believed that Saigon could defeat the communist insurgency--and yet by July of 1965, a mere nine months later, they would lock the United States on a path toward massive military intervention which would ultimately destroy Johnson's presidency and polarize the American people. Into the Quagmire presents a closely rendered, almost day-by-day account of America's deepening involvement in Vietnam during those crucial nine months. Mining a wealth of recently opened material at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and elsewhere, Brian VanDeMark vividly depicts the painful unfolding of a national tragedy. We meet an LBJ forever fearful of a conservative backlash, which he felt would doom his Great Society, an unsure and troubled leader grappling with the unwanted burden of Vietnam; George Ball, a maverick on Vietnam, whose carefully reasoned (and, in retrospect, strikingly prescient) stand against escalation was discounted by Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy; and Clark Clifford, whose last-minute effort at a pivotal meeting at Camp David failed to dissuade Johnson from doubling the number of ground troops in Vietnam. What comes across strongly throughout the book is the deep pessimism of all the major participants as things grew worse--neither LBJ, nor Bundy, nor McNamara, nor Rusk felt confident that things would improve in South Vietnam, that there was any reasonable chance for victory, or that the South had the will or the ability to prevail against the North. And yet deeper into the quagmire they went. Whether describing a tense confrontation between George Ball and Dean Acheson ("You goddamned old bastards," Ball said to Acheson, "you remind me of nothing so much as a bunch of buzzards sitting on a fence and letting the young men die") or corrupt politicians in Saigon, VanDeMark provides readers with the full flavor of national policy in the making. More important, he sheds greater light on why America became entangled in the morass of Vietnam.

Author : William J. Rust
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813135796
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Before the Quagmire written by William J. Rust and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-06-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decade preceding the first U.S. combat operations in Vietnam, the Eisenhower administration sought to defeat a communist-led insurgency in neighboring Laos. Although U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s focused primarily on threats posed by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, the American engagement in Laos evolved from a small cold war skirmish into a superpower confrontation near the end of President Eisenhower's second term. Ultimately, the American experience in Laos foreshadowed many of the mistakes made by the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s. In Before the Quagmire: American Intervention in Laos, 1954--1961, William J. Rust delves into key policy decisions made in Washington and their implementation in Laos, which became first steps on the path to the wider war in Southeast Asia. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, Before the Quagmire documents how ineffective and sometimes self-defeating assistance to Laotian anticommunist elites reflected fundamental misunderstandings about the country's politics, history, and culture. The American goal of preventing a communist takeover in Laos was further hindered by divisions among Western allies and U.S. officials themselves, who at one point provided aid to both the Royal Lao Government and to a Laotian general who plotted to overthrow it. Before the Quagmire is a vivid analysis of a critical period of cold war history, filling a gap in our understanding of U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia and America's entry into the Vietnam War.

Author : Ernestine Enomoto
Publisher : R & L Education
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Leading Through the Quagmire written by Ernestine Enomoto and published by R & L Education. This book was released on 2007 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: School leaders are constantly challenged by diverse students and conflicting interests between faculty and staff. They are often called upon to make sense of ethical quagmires, where rules might conflict with desired outcomes or personal values clash with professional obligations. Negotiating these dilemmas can be challenging, but democratic ethics can offer an effective process to work through them. Drawing from the writings of John Dewey, Leading Through the Quagmire advocates his notion that democracy is an appropriate response to the multitude of conflicting interests, needs, and values in educational settings. Moreover, Enomoto and Kramer propose an inquiry method to harness democratic ethics for engaging in fair deliberation and conflict resolution. This book provides the foundation for understanding tensions, as well as the methods and applications to navigate through them. Stories and examples are provided to enable readers to understand such terms as utilitarianism, ethical tensions, religious attitudes, and eco-feminism in meaningful ways.