Clear, Hold, and Destroy


Book Description

By the end of the American War in Vietnam, the coastal province of Phú Yên was one of the least-secure provinces in the Republic of Vietnam. It was also a prominent target of the American strategy of pacification—an effort, purportedly separate and distinct from conventional warfare, to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. In Robert J. Thompson III’s analysis, the consistent, and consistently unsuccessful, struggle to place Phú Yên under Saigon’s banner makes the province particularly fertile ground for studying how the Americans advanced pacification and why this effort ultimately failed. In March 1970 a disastrous military engagement began in Phú Yên, revealing the enemy’s continued presence after more than three years of pacification. Clear, Hold, and Destroy provides a fresh perspective on the war across multiple levels, from those making and implementing policy to those affected by it. Most pointedly, Thompson contends that pacification, far from existing apart from conventional warfare, actually depended on conventional military forces for its application. His study reaches back into Phú Yên’s storied history with pacification before and during the French colonial period, then focuses on the province from the onset of the American war in 1965 to its conclusion in 1975. A sharply focused, fine-grained analysis of one critical province during the Vietnam War, Thompson’s work demonstrates how pacification is better understood as the foundation of U.S. fighting in Vietnam.




Clear, Hold, and Destroy


Book Description

By the end of the American War in Vietnam, the coastal province of Phú Yên was one of the least-secure provinces in the Republic of Vietnam. It was also a prominent target of the American strategy of pacification--an effort, purportedly separate and distinct from conventional warfare, to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese. In Robert J. Thompson III's analysis, the consistent, and consistently unsuccessful, struggle to place Phú Yên under Saigon's banner makes the province particularly fertile ground for studying how the Americans advanced pacification and why this effort ultimately failed. In March 1970 a disastrous military engagement began in Phú Yên, revealing the enemy's continued presence after more than three years of pacification. Clear, Hold, and Destroy provides a fresh perspective on the war across multiple levels, from those making and implementing policy to those affected by it. Most pointedly, Thompson contends that pacification, far from existing apart from conventional warfare, actually depended on conventional military forces for its application. His study reaches back into Phú Yên's storied history with pacification before and during the French colonial period, then focuses on the province from the onset of the American war in 1965 to its conclusion in 1975. A sharply focused, fine-grained analysis of one critical province during the Vietnam War, Thompson's work demonstrates how pacification is better understood as the foundation of U.S. fighting in Vietnam.




Clear, Hold, and Destroy


Book Description

By the end of the American War in Vietnam, the coastal province of Phú Yên was one of the least-secure provinces in the Republic of Vietnam. It was also a prominent target of the American strategy of pacification—an effort, purportedly separate and distinct from conventional warfare, to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. In Robert J. Thompson III’s analysis, the consistent, and consistently unsuccessful, struggle to place Phú Yên under Saigon’s banner makes the province particularly fertile ground for studying how the Americans advanced pacification and why this effort ultimately failed. In March 1970 a disastrous military engagement began in Phú Yên, revealing the enemy’s continued presence after more than three years of pacification. Clear, Hold, and Destroy provides a fresh perspective on the war across multiple levels, from those making and implementing policy to those affected by it. Most pointedly, Thompson contends that pacification, far from existing apart from conventional warfare, actually depended on conventional military forces for its application. His study reaches back into Phú Yên’s storied history with pacification before and during the French colonial period, then focuses on the province from the onset of the American war in 1965 to its conclusion in 1975. A sharply focused, fine-grained analysis of one critical province during the Vietnam War, Thompson’s work demonstrates how pacification is better understood as the foundation of U.S. fighting in Vietnam.




On War


Book Description




Clear, Hold, and Destroy


Book Description

By the end of the American war in Vietnam, the coastal province of Phú Yên was one of the least-secure provinces in the Republic of Vietnam. It was also a prominent target of the American strategy of pacification--an effort, purportedly separate and distinct from conventional warfare, to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese. In Robert J. Thompson III's analysis, the consistent, and consistently unsuccessful, struggle to place Phú Yên under Saigon's banner makes the province particularly fertile ground for studying how the Americans advanced pacification and why this effort ultimately failed. In March 1970 a disastrous military engagement began in Phú Yên, revealing the enemy's continued presence after more than three years of pacification. Clear, Hold, and Destroy provides a fresh perspective on the war across multiple levels, from those making and implementing policy to those affected by it. Most pointedly, Thompson contends that pacification, far from existing apart from conventional warfare, actually depended on conventional military forces for its application. His study reaches back into Phú Yên's storied history with pacification before and during the French colonial period, then focuses on the province from the onset of the American War in 1965 to its conclusion in 1975. A sharply focused, fine-grained analysis of one critical province during the Vietnam War, Thompson's work demonstrates how pacification is better understood as the foundation of U.S. fighting in Vietnam.




Kill Anything That Moves


Book Description

Based on classified documents and interviews, argues that American acts of violence against millions of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War were a pervasive and systematic part of the war.




Advance and Destroy


Book Description

In the winter of 1944–1945, Hitler sought to divide Allied forces in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Luxembourg and Belgium. He deployed more than 400,000 troops in one of the last major German offensives of the war, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge, in a desperate attempt to regain the strategic initiative in the West. Hitler’s effort failed for a variety of reasons, but many historians assert that Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr.’s Third Army was ultimately responsible for securing Allied victory. Although Patton has assumed a larger-than-life reputation for his leadership in the years since World War II, scholars have paid little attention to his generalship in the Ardennes following the relief of Bastogne. In Advance and Destroy, Captain John Nelson Rickard explores the commander’s operational performance during the entire Ardennes campaign, through his “estimate of the situation,” the U.S. Army’s doctrinal approach to problem-solving. Patton’s day-by-day situational understanding of the Battle of the Bulge, as revealed through ULTRA intelligence and the influence of the other Allied generals on his decision-making, gives readers an in-depth, critical analysis of Patton’s overall effectiveness, measured in terms of mission accomplishment, his ability to gain and hold ground, and a cost-benefit analysis of his operations relative to the lives of his soldiers. The work not only debunks myths about one of America’s most controversial generals but provides new insights into his renowned military skill and colorful personality.




To Build as Well as Destroy


Book Description

For years, the so-called better-war school of thought has argued that the United States built a legitimate and viable non-Communist state in South Vietnam in the latter years of the Vietnam War and that it was only the military abandonment of this state that brought down the Republic of Vietnam. But Andrew J. Gawthorpe, through a detailed and incisive analysis, shows that, in fact, the United States failed in its efforts at nation building and had not established a durable state in South Vietnam. Drawing on newly opened archival collections and previously unexamined oral histories with dozens of U.S. military officers and government officials, To Build as Well as Destroy demonstrates that the United States never came close to achieving victory in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gawthorpe tells a story of policy aspirations and practical failures that stretches from Washington, D.C., to the Vietnamese villages in which the United States implemented its nationbuilding strategy through the Office of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support known as CORDS. Structural factors that could not have been overcome by the further application of military power thwarted U.S. efforts to build a viable set of non-Communist political, economic, and social institutions in South Vietnam. To Build as Well as Destroy provides the most comprehensive account yet of the largest and best-resourced nation-building program in U.S. history. Gawthorpe's analysis helps contemporary policy makers, diplomats, and military officers understand the reasons for this failure. At a moment in time when American strategists are grappling with military and political challenges in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, revisiting the historical lessons of Vietnam is a worthy endeavor.




Between the World and Me


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.




Counterinsurgency Operations


Book Description