The Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War :: Vietnam War Essays

The attacks by Communist forces inside South Vietnams major cities and towns that began around the Vietnamese new Year (Tet) of 1 February 1968 were the peak of an offense that took place over a period of several months during the Vietnam War. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, believed the attacks to be a go throw of the dice by the losing side. The attacks that Americans dubbed the Tet Offensive were just part of what the Communists called a General Offensive and Uprising, designed to jolt the war into a new phase. The offensive ultimately achieved the Communists aim, but at a price many of them thought excessive.The offensive had longterm conceptual origins in Vietnams August Revolution of 1945, in which the Communistled Viet Minh had instigated popular uprisings in the cities to seize power from a puppet government Japan had installed before its defeat. Two decades later, as American load to the antiCommunist government in Saigon deepened in the e arly 1960s, the Communists looked to that earlier event for inspiration. Lacking the military power to inflict outright defeat on the American military, the Communists had somehow to destroy American confidence that limited war could eventually bring victory for the United States. By sending armed forces today into the Souths cities and fomenting rebellion there, the Communists hoped to pull down the Saigon government or facilitate the rise to power of neutralists who would demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Even if the offensive did not bring warm victory, the Communists calculated it would allow rural forces to disrupt the pacification program, destroy the American illusion of success, and induce the United States to enter negotiations in which Hanoi could bargain from a position of strength.The plan formally approved by the Communist Party political bureau in Hanoi in July 1967 recognized that American, allied, and Saigon forces constituted a much more formidable foe than th e shaky regime the August Revolution had toppled in 1945. The offensive therefore actually began in September 1967, with weaponsupported assaults by the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN), supported from the North, on the U.S. combat bases located along route 9 just south of the demilitarized zone, and then with operations in the central highlands, to test American reactions. The tests revealed that the Americans would remain in defensive positions and although PAVN troops would face devastating firepower, massing for attack on these positions in remote areas could lure substantial forces away from population centers.

Ways To Fight The Drug War Essay -- essays research papers

Drug use has risen sharply in the United States in the past 40 years, with an estimated 23.6 million teenagers using illegal doses deep down the past year. Preventing drug use has been a major issue in the area of politics, schools, or within families. Drug holler occurs whenever the use of a drug causes physical or mental harm to the user. So far, society has been abusing drugs since the later nineteenth century, a time when the sale, purchase, possession, and use of drugs was not regulated. Dangerous drugs such as morphine, opium, and cocaine were used mainly for medical purposes including cures for depression, nervousness, alcoholism, and menstrual cramps. Because of the availability of these powerful drugs, people became addicts. In 1900, there were actually more narcotic addicts in the US than there are today however, most of the users who became addicts were medical addicts. Very few users took drugs for recreational use only. In 1914 as an effort to curb drug abuse in the United States, the government passed the Harrison Act, which made illegal to obtain a narcotic drug without a doctors prescription. There were nearly half(prenominal) a million addicts at the beginning of 1920 and by 1945 there were only 30,000 to 40,000 addicts. The demand for drugs began to rise again in the 1960s and continues to rise today. With this scary eyeshot in mind, the United States needs find a solution to the rising drug problem, and fast. Every year, more drugs are di...

Communication in The Global Village Essay -- Technology Globalization

The world that we understand is chop-chop becoming a much smaller entity. engine room is rapidly geting us to places we have never been before. Thanks to widespread globalization, and the explosive growth and use of the internet, people are uniting and communicating in ways never dreamed two decades past. While more developed countries are taking advantage of this new global village, less developed countries impotently stay in their idle life rafts as the sharks of these new virtual communities circle round. In the dawn of time communication started with mediums such as facial expressions, groaning, and sometimes just whacking a member of your community in the head. Communications simplest form is essentially dying with the construction and use of this weather vane of interweaving technology known as the internet. Unlike forms of communication of days long past , not everyone can get involved in this World childlike Web. The internet is a community that uses a simple non inten tional form of segregation that limits the use of the internet to people who live in countries that have the force to set up these online villages. The makings of this new virtual revolution is essentially separating people. In the article Social constitution for Cyberspace, Dale Spender argues how people are being rapidly separated into two groups the Master Minds and those that are being kept in the dark. She also explains how the People in the real world are being split up into the information-rich and the poor. (Spender, Composing Cyberspace, p 266.) Basically the people with access to a global village are moving forward and the people in underdevelop countries are lying stagnant. Like myself, Spender believes strongly in the well being of Third World countri... ...ciety demands a world that must rapidly swop and make life easier we will strive to achieve that level no matter what the task. Eventually everyone on this earth will be able to unify to create the ultimate uto pian global village, but until then we must look to countries less fortunate than us and continue to try and industrialize them to bring them up to our cyber caliber before they are forgotten. Priority needs to be given to research and policies that actually examine and deal with the impact that the new technologies are having on human beings, globally, nationally and locally. (Spender, Composing Cyberspace, p 269.) Works Cited Holten, Richard. Composing Cyberspace Identity, community, and knowledge, in the electronic age. United States Mcgraw-hill companies inc. 1998. Spender, Dale. Composing Cyberspace Social Policy for cyberspace. P. 266

The Best Day of their Life - Original Writing :: Papers

The Best Day of their Life - Original Writing The ground was set with fresh frost from the cool night before. Ice cover the once lively pond, with only the l whizz duck perched on the ice. Icicles hung from the church building roof like the cold fingers of the dead, pointing at the floor, and the final destination of all. The headst singles of all the patrons of the church bring down scattered about the graveyard, all of them in a bad state of disrepair. Some had been vandalised, many had just fallen foul of time. Spray cans lay on the floor in random locations, although many of them were congregated near the crumbling stone walls of the church. The church itself was at least four hundred years old and stood tower above the surrounding houses, like a sleeping giant among the humans. Copper roofing which had long turned green cover the majestic hall of the church, covered in the leftovers of the birds that enjoyed their stay there. A crooked weathervane hung from an old Christmas light, dangling just below the window often church steeple. The steeple had only one room in it which was just below the belfry. One cracked pane of glass allowed light to enter the dusty room, with a small hole in the bottom of the window allowing the gun barrel to poke out, armed with a scope through which a man stared. He had been there watching the churchyard, constitution himself since the early morning. The sun had risen from the east and had reached its peak as the man lay in wait. Squirrels had been going about their business all morning, foraging whacky from the surrounding trees and hiding them in the ground. The feeling in his legs had disappeared slowly and now they were completely numb, so he decided to check his escape route one last time, making sure that it was completely clear nothing must prevent him from a clean break. Pre-job jitters began to kick in his hand shake as he once again placed it on the handle o f

The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Shall Not Perish, and Two Soldiers :: Barn Burning Shall Not Perish Two Soldiers

The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkners Barn Burning, Shall Not Perish, and Two SoldiersThe meal, and more specifically the purpose of the family meal, has traditional connotations of comfort and togetherness. As shown in three of Faulkners short stories in The Country, intermissions in the life of the family are often reinforced in the plot of the story by disruptions in the meal. In Barn Burning, Abner enters the house at dusk and could smell the coffee from the room where they would presently eat up the dust-covered food remaining from the afternoon meal. (14) A warm meal would indicate fulfillment and cohesiveness within the family. The inclusion of the detail that the food was cold represents an inversion of these associations. The cold meal symbolizes the familys distaste with Abners actions. The memory of the dinner lingers with the family as they get ready for bed and appears linked with negative images of Where they had been were no long, water-cloudy scoriations r esembling the sporadic course of a lilliputian moving machine. (15) In addition, the emphasis that this dinner was in fact a left-over meal symbolizes that the pattern of Abners iconoclastic behavior and its effects on his family will not change.In Shall Not Perish, Mother, Father, and the narrator receive news that Pete has died at war. Upon hearing the bad news, the family provide and milked an came back and ate the cold supper. (103) In this short story, the eating of cold food represents the cold, harsh realities of death and mourning. The family has been left with a permanent void and the disruption in the family meal serves to further illustrate this point.The mother in Two Soldiers is preparing to send her son Pete off to war. As Petes younger brother recalls, sea dog was getting Pete ready to go. She washed and mended his clothes and cooked him a shoe box of vittles. (85) The mothers passion to make sure Pete leaves with one last meal, shows her desire to still be able t o nurture her son. This desire is inherent in the same way that faith is.

The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Shall Not Perish, and Two Soldiers :: Barn Burning Shall Not Perish Two Soldiers

The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkners Barn Burning, Shall Not Perish, and Two SoldiersThe meal, and more specifically the impression of the family meal, has traditional connotations of comfort and togetherness. As shown in three of Faulkners short stories in The Country, spreads in the life of the family are often reinforced in the plot of the story by disruptions in the meal. In Barn Burning, Abner enters the house at dusk and could smell the coffee from the room where they would presently fertilise the refrigerant food remaining from the afternoon meal. (14) A warm meal would indicate fulfillment and cohesiveness within the family. The inclusion of the detail that the food was cold represents an inversion of these associations. The cold meal symbolizes the familys distaste with Abners actions. The memory of the dinner lingers with the family as they get ready for bed and appears linked with negative images of Where they had been were no long, water-cloudy scoriations re sembling the sporadic course of a lilliputian moving machine. (15) In addition, the emphasis that this dinner was in fact a left-over meal symbolizes that the pattern of Abners wasteful behavior and its effects on his family will not change.In Shall Not Perish, Mother, Father, and the narrator receive news that Pete has died at war. Upon hearing the bad news, the family cater and milked an came back and ate the cold supper. (103) In this short story, the eating of cold food represents the cold, harsh realities of death and mourning. The family has been left with a permanent void and the disruption in the family meal serves to further illustrate this point.The mother in Two Soldiers is preparing to send her son Pete off to war. As Petes younger brother recalls, ambush was getting Pete ready to go. She washed and mended his clothes and cooked him a shoe box of vittles. (85) The mothers disposition to make sure Pete leaves with one last meal, shows her desire to still be able to nu rture her son. This desire is inherent in the same way that faith is.