Vietnam 101

College of the Ozarks, a small Work College nestled in the Ozark Mountains, has a patriotic goal and is taking a leadership role of filling in the gaps of American history by equipping future generations with the truth. Hopefully, this book will bridge the generation that fought the Vietnam War to the current generation, which has been taught little or nothing about the War and its meaning. As you will read, when students are taught the truth, they are willing to listen. In the case of the Vietnam War, there is no better way for today's generation of college students to understand this conflict than to travel to former battlefields with veterans who fought in these battles during their youth. Consequently, the country of Vietnam and the battle sites become a "classroom," and seeing them with veterans provides a "laboratory" for observations like no other. It is a generational bridge, connecting youth of today with Vietnam Veterans. This book depicts a course with a field trip. That is why it was written in an unusual style, common to what you might expect in a first-year "survey" class.

Henry Cabot Lodge became United States ambassador to South Vietnam in August 1963, a critical period in the evolution of American policy there. During the first of Lodge's two embassies in Saigon, a U.S. government-approved coup overthrew President Diem of South Vietnam and another U.S.-inspired coup brought to power a Vietnamese general trained in America. This book focuses on Lodge's ambassadorship from 1963 to June 1964, examining the constraints and possibilities inherent in the Vietnam situation at that time and revealing the role Lodge played in shaping President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 decision to commit U.S. troops to the war.Anne Blair is the first to draw on Lodge's collected papers, including an unpublished memoir, as well as on previously unavailable U.S. Saigon Embassy reports and on interviews with former U.S. officials and others who served with Lodge in Vietnam and Washington. According to Blair, Lodge felt strongly that U.S. troops should not be involved in the war, but his sense of the proper conduct of foreign affairs prevented him from opening a public debate on the matter. In addition, after the coup against Diem, Lodge regarded his mission in Saigon as completed and was disengaged in the vital 1964 period when the U.S. government should have reviewed its aims and vital stakes in South Vietnam. Lodge took up the Saigon mission and stayed with it because he was a patriot. But, Blair concludes, his good intentions were not coupled with effective policymaking, and the results proved disastrous for the future.

A candid memoir of being sent to Vietnam at age nineteen, witnessing the carnage of Hamburger Hill, and returning to an America in turmoil. Arthur Wiknik was a teenager from New England when he was drafted into the US Army in 1968, shipping out to Vietnam early the following year. Shortly after his arrival on the far side of the world, he was assigned to Camp Evans near the northern village of Phong Dien, only thirty miles from Laos and North Vietnam. On his first jungle patrol, his squad killed a female Viet Cong who turned out to have been the local prostitute. It was the first dead person he had ever seen. Wiknik's account of life and death in Vietnam includes everything from heavy combat to faking insanity to get some R & R. He was the first in his unit to reach the top of Hamburger Hill, and between sporadic episodes of combat, he mingled with the locals; tricked unwitting US suppliers into providing his platoon with hard-to-get food; defied a superior and was punished with a dangerous mission; and struggled with himself and his fellow soldiers as the antiwar movement began to affect them. Written with honesty and sharp wit by a soldier who was featured on a recent History Channel documentary about Vietnam, Nam Sense spares nothing and no one in its attempt to convey what really transpired for the combat soldier during this unpopular war. It is not about glory, mental breakdowns, flashbacks, or self-pity. The GIs Wiknik lived and fought with during his yearlong tour were not drug addicts or war criminals or gung-ho killers. They were there to do their duty as they were trained, support their comrades—and get home alive. Recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Military Writers Society of America.

This study of ten fateful decisions made on Indochina between 1961-75 highlights the ascent of the civilian militarists and of strategy over diplomacy in United States policymaking and reveals the inexorably interlinked and escalating character of the decisions and the central purpose of American presidents: not to have to face the expected domestic political consequences of defeat in Indochina. As a result, we were led into a prolonged stalemate in which "acting" and the management of programs became a more important preoccupation than thinking about our purposes and values, in which analysis become wholly subjective and therefore defective, and in which decision-making occurred in a closed system which did not allow for divergent inputs.

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This is the first full-length book on the concept of “People’s Diplomacy,” promoted by the president of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, at the peak of the Vietnam War from 1965-1972. It holds great appeal for historians, international relations scholars, diplomats, and the general reader interested in Vietnam. A form of informal diplomacy, people’s diplomacy was carried out by ordinary Vietnamese including writers, cartoonists, workers, women, students, filmmakers, medical doctors, academics, and sportspersons. They created an awareness of the American bombardment of innocent Vietnamese civilians, and made profound connections with the anti-war movements abroad. People’s diplomacy made it difficult for the United States to prolong the war because the North Vietnamese, together with the peace movements abroad, exerted popular pressure on the American presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to end the conflict. It was much more effective than the formal North Vietnamese diplomacy in gaining the support of Westerners who were averse to communism. It damaged the reputation of the United States by casting North Vietnam as a victim of American imperialism.

An overview of the revisionist case on the Vietnam War, showing how it could have been won by the US at a lower cost than was suffered in defeat.

Through the stories of numerous veterans and the author's own understanding as a mental health professional, A Vietnam Trilogy studies the impact of war on veterans from a psychiatric/psychological, social, and cultural perspective, both during and decades after the violence. The book reflects Scurfield's three-fold experiences in Vietnam, in 1968 as an Army social work officer serving acute battlefield psychiatric casualties; in 1989 when he co-led the first Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder therapy group of veterans back to Vietnam; and in 2000, as co-faculty for an award-winning Vietnam history course including three combat veterans. The book offers Vietnam veterans and other veterans a vicarious "healing journey" by relating the experiences of those who participated in these therapeutic efforts; it offers recommendations to veterans and those who wish to help them; and offers ideas on how some important understandings can be shared to the wider public.