Word: saigon
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Shaplen emphasizes the United States' failures in any number of Asian revolutions, offering candid assessments of people and policies that contributed to our mistakes. His chapters on the Indochinese nations, particularly Vietnam and Cambodia, are especially effective. He reminisces colorfully on Saigon under siege and the atrocities of Pol Pot's regime but does not limit himself to narrative. In the section entitled, "Why the Americans Failed," he writes...
...directed by Glenn Silber and Barry A. Brown, brilliantly reveals just what happened on Madison's tree-lined avenues and gracious hill-top campus. The film traces the development of the anti-war movement at the University of Wisconsin from the earliest demonstrations in 1963 to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Using rare, archival film obtained from the State Historical Society and authentic US Army combat footage, Silber and Brown carefully parallel the growth of the anti-war movement with the escalation of American involvement in Viet Nam, from the sparsely attended demonstrations against the February, 1964 bombings...
...considered negotiations as another battle. His idea of a negotiation was to put forward his unilateral demands. Their essence was for the U.S. to withdraw on a deadline so short that the collapse of Saigon would be inevitable. On the way out we were being asked to dismantle an allied government and establish an alternative whose composition would be prescribed by Hanoi. Any proposition that failed to agree with this he rejected as "not concrete...
...tactical options were considered: doing nothing (the preferred course of the State and Defense departments); attacking the sanctuaries with South Vietnamese forces only (my recommendation); and using whatever forces were necessary to neutralize all of the base areas, including American combat forces, recommended by Ellsworth Bunker, our Ambassador in Saigon, General Creighton Abrams, our commander in Viet Nam. and the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...base areas were of special concern. The Parrot's Beak, Cambodia's Svay Rieng province, jutted into Viet Nam to within only 33 miles of Saigon. Farther north was an area code-named the Fishhook. No one around the table questioned the consequences of a Communist takeover of Cambodia. If Cambodia collapsed, we would be even harder pressed to pull out unilaterally; if we accepted any of the other options, we would be charged with "expanding the war." There was no middle ground...