Vietnam Politics

The cover of darkness was pulled back by the NODS scopes in their hands. The enemy had no idea what was about to befall them. With the rush of wings of dragons, the sounds of M-14s, M-870 shotguns, M-16s, and grenades spoke the finality of death. This gave the human pack mules a taste of what would continue to reign upon them in the House of the Dragon. North and South Vietnam were at war. Indeed, all of Southeast Asia was at war. Due to national commitments, the US military was drawn into the fray.

Here is the epic story of Vietnam and the sixties told through the events of a few tumultuous days in October 1967. With meticulous and captivating detail, They Marched Into Sunlight brings that catastrophic time back to life while examining questions about the meaning of dissent and the official manipulation of truth, issues that are as relevant today as they were decades ago.

David W. Powell enlisted for a tour of duty in April 1966 with the US Marines after receiving an imminent draft notice. Believing he would be able to leverage his existing skills as a computer programmer, he never thought all they would see on his resume was his Karate expertise. Even less that he would wind up serving as a Rocket man in the jungles of Da Nang and Chu Lai for a 13 month tour in hell. David's journey from naive civilian to battle-hardened combat veteran shows us all how fragile our humanity really is.

America at the Brink of Empire explores the foreign policy leadership of Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger regarding the extent of the United States' mission to insure a stable world order. Lawrence W. Serewicz argues that in the Vietnam conflict the United States experienced an identity crisis whereby America came close to assuming an imperial role, stretching the country to the limits of its identity as a republic. Serewicz offers a revealing look at the parts played by Rusk and Kissinger - and President Lyndon Johnson - in bringing the nation to the brink of empire.

Spreading democracy takes more than cutting-edge military hardware. Winning the hearts and minds of a troubled nation is a special mission we give to bewildered young soldiers who can't speak the native language, don't know the customs, can't tell friends from enemies, and, in this wonderfully outrageous Iraq-era novel about Vietnam, wonder why they have to risk their lives spraying peanut plants, inoculating pigs, and hauling miracle rice seed for Ho Chi Minh.

On November 18, 1967, Private First Class Davis' artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At 21 years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body. Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated.

In this inspiring meditation on courage, Senator John McCain shares his most cherished stories of ordinary individuals who have risked everything to defend the people and principles they hold most dear. These are some of the examples McCain turns to for inspiration and offers to others to help them summon the resolve to be both good and great. He explains the value of courage in both everyday actions and extraordinary feats. Most of all, listeners discover how sometimes simply setting the right example can be the ultimate act of courage.

Pol Pot was a Cambodian political leader and revolutionary who worked as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 till 1979. He was a key member of Cambodia's communist party, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997, and acted as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. He was a Marxist-Leninist and a Khmer nationalist. Cambodia was changed into a one-party communist state under his management, and the Cambodian genocide happened.

Abridged edition: Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose?

En 1967, en la iglesia Riverside de la Ciudad de Nueva York, el Dr. King se paró frente a una audiencia entusiasmada y criticó la guerra de Vietnam como un acto de fuerza destructivo y una cruel manipulación de los pobres por parte de ambos bandos. Instó a los ciudadanos a confrontar la dura realidad de la guerra y a seguir un camino en el que todo se nos presente como una elección; en sus palabras: «una elección de coexistencia no violeta en vez de una coaniquilación violenta».

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But will the SAS survive a nightmare journey into the tunnel lair of the Viet Cong? June 1966: 3 Squadron SAS (Australian Special Air Service) set up a forward operating base in Vietnam's Phuoc Tuy province, a swampy hell of jungle and paddy fields 45 miles east of Saigon, in the heart of enemy territory. The Viet Cong have bases throughout the jungle, and the Australians soon find themselves under constant attack.

"Courage," Winston Churchill explained, is "the first of human qualities...because it guarantees all the others." As a naval officer, P.O.W., and one of America's most admired political leaders, John McCain has seen countless acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Now, in this inspiring meditation on courage, he shares his most cherished stories of ordinary individuals who have risked everything to defend the people and principles they hold most dear.

Among the famines of the Second World War, the Great Famine of Vietnam (1944-1945) remains little known outside of Vietnam, especially compared to its contemporaries in Bengal, Henan, and the Soviet Union. Though natural disasters catalyzed the famine, the scope of the famine was exacerbated by the brutal French extraction of resources in northern Vietnam at the command of the Japanese military. However, the famine's seeds were sown long before the disaster, with the arrival of the French in the Mekong Delta and their subsequent colonization of Dai Viet.