Peace and Conflict

An investigation into the long-term impact of transgenerational trauma and the possibilities for healing, this book explores the links between personal histories and world events and helps us to understand life's dualities: violence and peace, self and other, stability and change, slavery and freedom. Author Ivana Milojevic asks How does violence change us? Is it possible to change the inner landscape of one's thinking in the midst of pain and suffering? and If this is our past, how might our future be different? Oscillating between two voices, Milojevic journeys between the personal ("breathing in"), which describes her experience of violence; while the second academic voice ("breathing out") tries to make sense of it. The rhythm created by inhaling and exhaling reflects not only what we take from the world but also what we give back to it. Breathing is an inquiry into alternative futures as Milojevic explores a range of possibilities, both for each of us personally, and for the world.

By now the world knows well the exploits of World War II admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and "Bull" Halsey. These brilliant strategists and combat commanders--backed by a powerful Allied coalition, a nation united, gifted civilian leaders, and abundant war-making resources--led U.S. and allied naval forces to victory against the Axis powers. Leadership during the Vietnam War was another story. The Vietnam War and its aftermath sorely tested the professional skill of four-star admirals Harry D. Felt, Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, Thomas H. Moorer, Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., and James L. Holloway III. Unlike their World War II predecessors, these equally battle-tested leaders had to cope with a flawed American understanding of U.S. and Vietnamese Communist strengths and weaknesses, distrustful and ill-focused Washington leaders, an increasingly discontented American populace, and an ultimately failing war effort. Like millions of other Americans, these five admirals had to come to terms with America's first lost war, and what that loss meant for the future of the nation and the U.S. armed forces. The challenges were both internal and external. A destabilized U.S. Navy was troubled by racial discord, drug abuse, anti-war and anti-establishment sentiment, and a host of personnel and material ills. At the same time, increasingly serious global threats to US interests, such as the rise of Soviet nuclear-missile and naval power, were shaping confrontations on the postwar stage. Critical to the story is how these naval leaders managed their relationships with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and Secretaries of Defense McNamara, Laird, and Schlesinger. Based on prodigious research into many formerly classified sources, Edward J. Marolda relates in dramatic detail how America's top naval leaders tackled their responsibilities, their successes, and their failures. This is a story of dedication to duty, professionalism, and service by America's top admirals during a time of great national and international adversity.

Crooked Bamboo is a political memoir centered on Nguyen Thai's inside account of South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem regime. Thai was a close personal aide for Diem as well as Director General of Vietnam Press, giving him significant access to Diem and other Ngo family members. Although the Diem era is the focus of the memoir, Nguyen Thai's post-1963 career as a government official, businessman, and confidant of several key South Vietnamese figures sheds light on the aftermath of the Diem regime and the dilemmas of South Vietnam's anti-communist elite throughout the Vietnam War. Thai's attempts to help bring the war to a negotiated end and his experiences as one of the first former South Vietnamese officials to return to Communist Vietnam also offer important reflections on the meaning of the war and its aftermath.

No other Vietnamese family in modern time had such an intense involvement in high politics and public affairs as the Ng-Đìnhs. Through the tenure of President Ng-Đình Diệm of the Republic of Vietnam (1955–1963), this family helped shape Vietnamese history in numerous ways. President Diệm's rule in South Vietnam was perceived by many to be authoritarian and nepotistic, but it is important for historians in general and for anyone interested in Vietnamese history in particular to learn more about his family members who played such important roles in his government. How did they see themselves, their country, and their compatriots? How did each member of the family think of others? How did they view the family's role in history?Sixty years after the death Ng-Đình Nhu, English-language readers can now learn about Madame Ng-Đình Nhu's life from her own words and recollections.Of all the Ng-Đìnhs, Madame Ng-Đình Nhu (Trần Lệ Xuân) was perhaps the most controversial figure. In this posthumous memoir translated from French, Madame Nhu narrates important events in her life, from her childhood to her marriage to Mr. Nhu, from her time in Huế during the Franco-Vietnamese war to the happy years of the Diệm government, and from her forced exile to the last days of her life. A complex individual and a strong-willed woman who refused to accept the terrible hands fate dealt her, Madame Nhu bared her pains, lamented the plight of Vietnam, and railed against the foreign powers that meddled in Vietnamese affairs.In an essay accompanying their mother's narrative in The White Pebble, the late Ng-Đình Lệ Quyên and Ng-Đình Quỳnh (along with Jacqueline Willemetz) join their mother to defend the integrity of the Diệm government and the Ng-Đình family against their critics. By telling the family's history alongside that of the Vietnamese nation, Ng-Đình Nhu's children wanted to demonstrate the sincerity and depth of patriotism in the family.This book not only provides a unique account of Madame Nhu and the Ng-Đình family by its members but also illuminates politics in Republican Vietnam and its troubled relationship with the United States

When the tyrannical Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003, the war in Iraq was in a precarious position. A provisional government had been assembled, but the Iraqi government was not yet recognized as sovereign. They were now expected to put their most infamous citizen on trial for war crimes. Called into duty at this moment was Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic, who was tasked with facilitating U.S. media presence at the arraignment which would establish the judicial framework for future tribunals. Admiral Slavonic was party to the historic US-Iraqi Transfer of Sovereignty and then as the senior military officer in the Iraqi courtroom where he was one of fifteen individuals to witness the historic event. As the senior military officer in the room with fifteen other observers, he managed a challenging pool of media jockeying for access for this once in a career story and plus served as advisor to the Iraqi judge on various media issues. Slavonic's first-hand narrative of a unique moment in military history are never-before-seen transcripts of Saddam Hussein's trial. For the first time, readers can read how Saddam responded to his charges, along with eleven of Hussein's closest advisors and cabinet members who were arraigned that day, and several charged with war "crimes against humanity". This would be the last time all twelve men would be together again who were responsible for the deaths of over several million fellow Iraqi citizens. This book expands our examination of difficult wars and chronicles the legal reckoning and downfall of a tyrant.

During the war in Vietnam, thousands of young men served as conscientious objector medics. They had been certified by their local draft boards as noncombatants, but many would know intense combat nonetheless. Without weapons training, they ran through the infantry lines, answering the desperate call, “Medic!” Many displayed exemplary heroism even at the cost of their lives. With the end of the draft, we will never see their like again. “Conscientious Objectors at War” tells their stories within the background context of pacifist churches in America. It is the first book exclusively devoted to such men, who emerged initially from the historic peace churches—Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites—and from Seventh-day Adventists, who would comprise roughly half of all conscientious objector medics serving in the Vietnam War. From World War II on, growing numbers of men from mainstream churches made the same choices, and after a Supreme Court decision in 1965, so too would men who claimed humanist and secular justification. The pages contain the stories of pantheists and Catholics, among others from the peace traditions. Gary Kulik, who also served as a conscientious-objector medic, interweaves his own story into those he recounts, stories of fierce combat, stumbling accidents, moments of fleeting honor and ever-present deat

The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The women's movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily reviled as "libbers." Inette Miller is one year out of college-a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to accompany him to war. There are obstacles. All wives of US military are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper's editor, Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter. Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After thirty days, she is on her own. As one of the rare woman war correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army soldier, Miller's experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don't shines a light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious woman of that era and illustrates the schizophrenic struggle between the forces of powerful feminist ideology and the contrarian forces of the world as it was. Girls Don't is the story of what happens when a twenty-three-year-old feminist makes her way into the land of machismo. This is a war story, a love story, and an open-hearted confessional within the burgeoning women's movement, chronicling its demands and its rewards.

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources from the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials. Breaking air power into six different mission sets-air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction-Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam. While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

One deckhand's memoir of swift boat life in Vietnam

A retrospective collection of one veteran's fifty years of Vietnam short stories