John R. MacArthur -- who is the publisher of Harper's Magazine -- examines the government's assault on the constitutional freedoms of the U.S. media during the 1991 gulf war. With a new preface.

The effects of domestic politics on the Vietnam War are revealed in this groundbreaking historical study by the author of The Price of Loyalty. In Vietnam's Second Front, Andrew L.Johns examines how American domestic politics effected the Vietnam War. He pays special attention to the role of the Republican Party, from the Nixon administration to grassroots organizations. The revealing analysis sheds new light on the relationship between Congress and the imperial presidency as they struggled for control over US foreign policy. Johns argues that, from 1961 through the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations failed to achieve victory on both fronts of the Vietnam War―military and political―because of their preoccupation with domestic politics. Johns details the political dexterity required of all three presidents and of members of Congress to maneuver between the countervailing forces of escalation and negotiation, offering a provocative account of the ramifications of their decisions. With clear, incisive prose and extensive archival research, Johns's analysis covers the broad range of the Republican Party's impact on the Vietnam War, offers a compelling reassessment of responsibility for the conflict, and challenges assumptions about the roles of Congress and the president in US foreign relations./

Some will be shocked to find out that the United States and Ho Chi Minh, our nemesis for much of the Vietnam War, were once allies. Indeed, during the last year of World War II, American spies in Indochina found themselves working closely with Ho Chi Minh and other anti-colonial factions-compelled by circumstances to fight together against the Japanese. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis reveals how this relationship emerged and operated and how it impacted Vietnam's struggle for independence. The men of General William Donovan's newly-formed Office of Strategic Services closely collaborated with communist groups in both Europe and Asia against the Axis enemies. In Vietnam, this meant that OSS officers worked with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, whose ultimate aim was to rid the region of all imperialist powers, not just the Japanese. Ho, for his part, did whatever he could to encourage the OSS's negative view of the French, who were desperate to regain their colony. Revealing details not previously known about their covert operations, Bartholomew-Feis chronicles the exploits of these allies as they developed their network of informants, sabotaged the Japanese occupation's infrastructure, conducted guerrilla operations, and searched for downed American fliers and Allied POWs. Although the OSS did not bring Ho Chi Minh to power, Bartholomew-Feis shows that its apparent support for the Viet Minh played a significant symbolic role in helping them fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Japan's surrender. Her study also hints that, had America continued to champion the anti-colonials and their quest for independence, rather than caving in to the French, we might have been spared our long and very lethal war in Vietnam. Based partly on interviews with surviving OSS agents who served in Vietnam, Bartholomew-Feis's engaging narrative and compelling insights speak to the yearnings of an oppressed people-and remind us that history does indeed make strange bedfellows.

The Vietnam War has been analyzed, dissected, and debated from multiple perspectives for decades, but domestic considerations-such as partisan politics and election-year maneuvering-are often overlooked as determining factors in the evolution and outcome of America's longest war. In Vietnam's Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War, Andrew L. Johns assesses the influence of the Republican Party- its congressional leadership, politicians, grassroots organizations, and the Nixon administration-on the escalation, prosecution, and resolution of the Vietnam War. This groun.

During the Vietnam War, young African Americans fought to protect the freedoms of Southeast Asians and died in disproportionate numbers compared to their white counterparts. Despite their sacrifices, black Americans were unable to secure equal rights at home, and because the importance of the war overshadowed the civil rights movement in the minds of politicians and the public, it seemed that further progress might never come. For many African Americans, the bloodshed, loss, and disappointment of war became just another chapter in the history of the civil rights movement. Lawrence Allen Eldridge explores this two-front war, showing how the African American press grappled with the Vietnam War and its impact on the struggle for civil rights. Written in a clear narrative style, Chronicles of a Two-Front War is the first book to examine coverage of the Vietnam War by black news publications, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 to the final withdrawal of American ground forces in the spring of 1973 and the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975. Eldridge reveals how the black press not only reported the war but also weighed its significance in the context of the civil rights movement. The author researched seventeen African American newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, the Baltimore Afro-American, and the New Courier, and two magazines, Jet and Ebony. He augmented the study with a rich array of primary sources—including interviews with black journalists and editors, oral history collections, the personal papers of key figures in the black press, and government documents, including those from the presidential libraries of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford—to trace the ups and downs of U.S. domestic and wartime policy especially as it related to the impact of the war on civil rights. Eldridge examines not only the role of reporters during the war, but also those of editors, commentators, and cartoonists. Especially enlightening is the research drawn from extensive oral histories by prominent journalist Ethel Payne, the first African American woman to receive the title of war correspondent. She described a widespread practice in black papers of reworking material from major white papers without providing proper credit, as the demand for news swamped the small budgets and limited staffs of African American papers. The author analyzes both the strengths of the black print media and the weaknesses in their coverage. The black press ultimately viewed the Vietnam War through the lens of African American experience, blaming the war for crippling LBJ’s Great Society and the War on Poverty. Despite its waning hopes for an improved life, the black press soldiered on.

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, spanned from November 1, 1955, to April 30, 1975, and took place in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The conflict was officially between North and South Vietnam and was part of the broader Indochina Wars. North Vietnam received support from the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies, while the US, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and other anti-communist nations backed South Vietnam. Lasting over two decades, the war has been characterized by some as a Cold War-era proxy war. It included not only the battle in Vietnam but also the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, leading to all three countries becoming communist states by 1975. The roots of the conflict can be traced back to the First Indochina War, which involved the French colonial administration against the Viet Minh, a left-wing revolutionary force. After the French forces' departure from Indochina in 1954, the United States assumed financial and military support for the South Vietnamese government. The Viet Cong (VC), also known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), emerged in South Vietnam as a common front and began a guerrilla campaign, with guidance from North Vietnam. North Vietnam invaded Laos in the mid-1950s to support the insurgents and constructed the Ho Chi Minh Trail for supplying and reinforcing the Viet Cong. Under President John F. Kennedy's Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) program, US involvement escalated from fewer than a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 in 1964. By 1963, North Vietnam had sent 40,000 troops to fight in South Vietnam.