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America In Vietnam
''America in Vietnam'' is a book by Guenter Lewy about America's role in the Vietnam War. The book is highly influential although it has remained controversial even decades after its publication. Lewy contends that the US actions in Vietnam had been neither illegal nor immoral and that tales of American atrocities were greatly exaggerated in what he understands as a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations. The text returned to the limelight during the 2004 US presidential election, when it was cited by several groups supporting the reelection of George W. Bush, in contending that Democratic presidential contender John Kerry had betrayed his country for his participation in anti-war activities upon his return from service in Vietnam. Overview Published in 1978, ''America in Vietnam'' argues against traditional or "orthodox" interpretations of the war as unnecessary, unjust, or unwinnable. The book has proven highly controversial. Historians of the "orthodox" school have sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy (born 22 August 1923) is a German-born American author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, ''America in Vietnam'', and several controversial works that deal with the applicability of the term ''genocide'' to various historical events. Lewy sees the word ''genocide'' as an inappropriate label for either Romani genocide or Armenian genocide. In 1939 he migrated from Nazi Germany to Mandatory Palestine. After World War II, he migrated to the United States to reunite with his parents. Lewy earned a BA at City College in New York City and a MA and PhD at Columbia University. He has been on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., and was a frequent contributor to ''Commentary''. Early life Lew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genocidal Intent
Genocidal intent is the ''mens rea'' for the crime of genocide. "Intent to destroy" is one of the elements of the crime of genocide according to the 1948 Genocide Convention. There are some analytic differences between the concept of intent under national criminal law, where responsibility for a murder is ascribed to an individual based on their mental state, and international law. Under international law, responsibility falls upon individuals in their capacities as members of certain organizations or other official roles. The intent for genocide is less direct. An international court might look at whether the defendant participated in planning the genocidal acts, perhaps within the auspices of a certain organizational structure, or whether they acted with knowledge of such a preconceived plan. The Tribunal for Rwanda, in one of their cases, decided that it was not enough for a defendant to know that their acts could contribute to the destruction of a group. Scholars have suggested ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free-fire Zone
A freedom zone to fire in U.S. military parlance is a fire control measure, used for coordination between adjacent combat units. The definition used in the Vietnam War by U.S. troops may be found in field manual FM 6-20: :A specific designated area into which any weapon system may fire without additional coordination with the establishing headquarters. World War II General Chuck Yeager in his autobiography describes his (and his associates) disapproval of shoot-anything-that-moves low level strafing missions during World War II (although they were not necessarily called "freedom zone to fire" missions). He described his feeling that, had the U.S. lost the war, it might have been considered a criminal activity. Vietnam War Returning veterans, affected civilians and others have said that U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), based on the assumption that all friendly forces had been cleared from the area, established a policy designating "freedom zones to fire" as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jewish Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland. Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933. After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler dictatorial plenary powers, the government began isolating J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domino Theory
The domino theory is a geopolitical theory which posits that increases or decreases in democracy in one country tend to spread to neighboring countries in a domino effect. It was prominent in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s in the context of the Cold War, suggesting that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow. It was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world. Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described the theory during a news conference on 7 April 1954, when referring to communism in Indochina as follows: Moreover, Eisenhower’s deep belief in the domino theory in Asia heightened the "perceived costs for the United States of pursuing multilateralism" because of multifaceted events including the " 1949 victory of the Chinese Communist Party, the June 1950 North Korean invasion, the 1954 Quemoy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. In totalitarian states, political power is often held by autocrats, such as dictators (totalitarian dictatorship) and absolute monarchs, who employ all-encompassing campaigns in which propaganda is broadcast by state-controlled mass media in order to control the citizenry. By 1950, the term and concept of totalitarianism entered mainstream Western political discourse. Furthermore this era also saw anti-communist and McCarthyist political movements intensify and use the concept of totalitarianism as a tool to convert pre-World War II anti-fascism into Cold War anti-communism. As a political ideology in itself, totalitarianism is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism (german: Hitlerfaschismus). The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War. Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates a dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist '' Völkisch'' movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the paramilitary groups that emerged af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. Draper (September 11, 1912 – February 21, 2006) was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran–Contra Affair. Draper was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 1990 recipient of the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians from the American Historical Association. Biography Early years Theodore Draper was born Theodore Dubinsky on September 11, 1912, one of four children.Christopher Lehmann-Haupt"Theodore Draper, Freelance Historian, Is Dead at 93" ''The New York Times,'' February 22, 2006. His younger brother was Hal Draper, who became a noted Marxist historian. Theodore's parents were ethnic Jews who emigrated to New York City from Ukraine, then part of the Russian empire.Adam Bernstein"Scholar, Historian Theodore Draper,"''Was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Walzer
Michael Laban Walzer (born 1935) is an American political theorist and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, he is editor emeritus of ''Dissent'', an intellectual magazine that he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at Brandeis University. He has written books and essays on a wide range of topics—many in political ethics—including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, Zionism, economic justice, social criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation. He is also a contributing editor to ''The New Republic''. To date, he has written 27 books and published over 300 articles, essays, and book reviews in ''Dissent'', ''The New Republic'', ''The New York Review of Books'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The New York Times'', '' Harpers'', and many philosophical and political science journals. Early life and education Born to a Jewish family on March 3, 1935, Walzer gradua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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