Browsing by Subject "Vietnam"
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Item ''A far more formidable task'': the 101st Airborne Division's pacification of Thua Thien Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1968-1972(Texas A&M University, 2006-10-30) Werkheiser, Edwin Brooks, IIThis thesis seeks to identify, describe, and analyze the tactics used by the 101st Airborne Division in the pacification of the Republic of Vietnam's Thua Thien province from 1968 to 1972. Despite the larger calamity of the Vietnam War, the 101st developed an effective set of measures against the Vietnamese communist insurgency. These measures depended largely on the ability of the division's lower-level units to attack the Viet Cong political infrastructure, provide security for Thua Thien's population, and build effective South Vietnamese territorial forces in their areas of operation following the communist 1968 Tet offensive. These findings are based on the official reports, orders, and records generated by the division during its service in Vietnam and currently stored in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland and U.S. Army's Military History Institute in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Additionally, the Military History Institute's "Company Command in Vietnam" series of interviews conducted from 1982 to 1984 with officers who served in Vietnam provided valuable insight. This thesis looks at counterinsurgency practices at the lowest levels where theory and policy are translated into action. Operations Narrative: 3 September 1970. "At 0525 hours D Company, 3d Platoon had two frag grenades tossed into its night defensive position. A member of the platoon threw one of the grenades out of the position before it exploded. He jumped on the other grenade and covered it with his body. The grenade did not explode due to the fact that the safety had not been removed."1 I was inspired to undertake and complete this study by the courageous and fortunate soldier in 3rd Platoon, D Company, 3-187th Infantry and the thousands of others like him whose exploits I found in the footnotes of the Vietnam War. Their stories were resting uneasily as antiseptic fragments in a hundred reports, giving single-sentence snapshots of their part in a war many more clever people declared lost just as they began their fight in 1968. Their names are forgotten to time and their efforts largely relegated to obscurity by others who occupied a larger, grenade-free stage at much less personal risk. Still, they are the men we all want alongside us in our night defensive position. Their deeds are much easier to comment on than they were to perform. 1. Hq., 3-187 Infantry, "Combat After Action Report: Operation Texas Star, dated 20 September 1970," p. 5, Box 19, Command Reports, Assistant Chief of Staff Intelligence/Operations (S-2/3), 3d Battalion, 187th Infantry, Infantry Units, Record Group 472, National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, MD.Item Creative Circumvention: Counterinsurgency and The Green Berets During the Presidency of John F. Kennedy(Texas Tech University, 1996-08) Lerner, Matthew DNot Available.Item Dropping the baton: decisions in United States policy on Indochina, 1943-1945(Texas Tech University, 2004-05) Hunt, Sanford BNot availableItem Endohelminths from six rare species of turtles (Bataguridae) from Southeast Asia confiscated by international authorities in Hong Kong, China(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Murray, Rebecca AnnSpecimens of 6 species of threatened, vulnerable, and endangered turtles (Cuora amboinensis, Cyclemys dentata, Heosemys grandis, Orlitia borneensis, Pyxidea mouhotii, and Siebenrockiella crassicollis) belonging to family Bataguridae, were confiscated in Hong Kong, China on 11 December 2001 by international authorities. Endohelminth studies on these turtle species are scarce, and this study provided a rare opportunity to examine a limited number of specimens for endohelminths. Ten different parasite species were collected and there were 16 new host records. This is the first record of a parasite from P. mouhotii. The parasite prevalences found in this study provide a basis for a better understanding of the phylogenetic relationships of the family Bataguridae to other families, especially Testudinidae. Based on known life cycles, parasites found provided an indication of food preferences of these 6 turtle species that support previous studies of the turtles' feeding habits. However, the results of the parasite survey from O. borneensis provided additional feeding habit information. The list of endohelminths herein is intended to provide a foundation for future parasite studies of the 6 species of Asian turtles.Item Influences on Mental Health Service Utilization for Vietnamese Young Adults(2012-08-15) Phan, Hang Tu; Stewart, SunitaBACKGROUND: Vietnamese-Americans underutilize mental health services. Several factors have been proposed to influence rates of service utilization within this population, including cultural identification and families' acceptance of such services. Most measures of cultural identification are lengthy and burdensome. Furthermore, studies examining the link between parental attitudes towards mental health services and their children's attitudes have only included children who were under the age of 18 - therefore unable to legally seek their own services. This study was designed to address these gaps by developing and testing brief scales of identification with Vietnamese and American culture, and obtaining information about the influence of parents' attitudes on older adolescents and young adults in this cultural group where a strong family orientation persists through the lifespan. A third aim of the study was to examine the role of the participants' acceptance of mental health services both as a predictor for utilization of such services, and as a mediator between other predictors and utilization. SUBJECTS: The participants in the study included a total of 87 Vietnamese-American young adults between the ages of 18 to 30 years old. Participants were recruited from the Texas Exes Asian Alumni Network (TEAAN) in Austin, Texas and from the Mother of Perpetual Faith Catholic Church's youth group. Recruitment also occurred through a method called the "snowball effect," where those involved in the study were asked to help recruit additional participants. METHOD: Surveys were completed on-line. Participants reported their mental health service utilization in the past 12 months. They also were administered measures of potential predictors: cultural identification scales, the participants' distress level, perceived stigma towards mental health services, perceived parental acceptance of mental health services, and their own (personal) acceptance of mental health services. RESULTS: The psychometric properties of the brief cultural identification scales were examined; the scales have good validity, but slightly low reliability. None of the proposed factors were found to be significant predictors of formal mental health service utilization, but items assessing distress level were found to correlate with service utilization at a trend level. The only factor found to predict personal acceptance was perceived parental acceptance of these services. Because personal acceptance was not found to be a predictor of mental health service use, it could not serve as a mediating variable between the other factors and service utilization. DISCUSSION: Before the originally developed cultural identity scales can be used for research, further development of the scales will be necessary. A limitation of this study is that there were very few participants who reported formal mental health service utilization, reducing the power to determine prediction to this variable. In this sample, only distress was found to be even a marginal predictor of mental health service use, suggesting that the low rates of mental health service utilization found in these Vietnamese young adults may in fact be due to actual low levels of psychological distress. The fact that parental acceptance significantly predicted personal acceptance of mental health services among participants supports the idea that parental attitudes towards mental health services may have been adopted by their children, even after they were independent enough to seek their own services. Future research and clinical implications are discussed. [Keywords: Vietnamese; help-seeking; bicultural; unicultural; service utilization ]Item Military History, Strategic Studies, and Special Education(2013-04) Burns, Jennifer M; Milam, Ron; Lewis, Dave; Lock, RobinMy final portfolio consists of my three main areas of study. The first chapter of the portfolio examines the overlapping themes as well as concepts in my studies. The remaining chapters showcase my strongest papers throughout my graduate career as well as highlights my interests within the three different fields.Item Pliocene to recent stratigraphy of the Cuu Long and Nam Con Son Basins, offshore Vietnam(Texas A&M University, 2006-08-16) Yarbrough, Christopher NeilThe Cuu Long and Nam Con Basins, offshore Vietnam, contain sediment dispersal systems, from up-dip fluvial environments to down-dip deep-water slope and basinal environments that operated along the southern continental margin of Vietnam during Pliocene to Recent time. The available data enabled sediment thickness patterns, sequence-stratigraphic relationships, and channel types (fluvial to deep-water channels) within the lower Pliocene to Recent stratigraphic succession in the Cuu Long and Nam Con Son basins of offshore Vietnam to be analyzed. At least nine sequences and their accompanying systems tracts exist in the Pliocene to Recent section. Shelf-edge development in the study area is limited to the Eastern Nam Con Son Sub-Basin. Overall south to southeastward migration of the shelf edge complex during Pliocene to Recent time indicates that the Paleo-Mekong River System was the dominant sediment source for the area.Item Revenge and Responsibility in Contemporary War Crimes and Courts-Martial(2012-02-14) Garcia, AprilThis project seeks to address the recurring theme of revenge within war as exhibited in the recent upsurge of war crimes within the past ten years. To begin, I present an overview of Emile Durkheim?s perspective on punishment from The Division of Labor in Society. I argue that contemporary punishment is still primitive in nature and maintains a retributive form. This synopsis opens the discussion of two key factors within punishment: revenge and responsibility. To analyze these key elements, I conduct a content analysis utilizing courts-martial transcripts not readily available to the public for the recent cases of Operation Iron Triangle, the Baghdad Canal Killings and the Afghan Kill Team murders. As a historical comparative to the latest war crimes, I also analyze the My Lai case from Vietnam, using documentary transcripts with veterans involved in that operation. Throughout the analyses of all four cases, I employ the work of Paul Fauconnet?s Responsibility which further develops Durkheim?s ideology of revenge and augments our own understanding of collective and individual responsibility in society. I close this project with a discussion on Fauconnet?s ?law of war? and its implications for soldiers enlisted in war time.Item Searching for the spirit(s) of diasporic Viet Nam : appeasing the ancestors and articulating cultural belonging(2013-05) Peché, Linda Ho; Strong, Pauline Turner, 1953-This dissertation contributes an interpretation of the ancestral altar tradition among Vietnamese American first and second generation practitioners. It traces the contours of the shifting transformations in domestic religious practice, specifically the transnational and diasporic dimensions in people's lives. I address how and toward what ends the "spiritual" is accessed, experienced and/or transformed in the materiality of everyday life, in the context of a complex relationship to a diasporic homeland and an emerging second generation. The research was conducted in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio (Texas), Carthage (Missouri), Sài Gòn (Viet Nam) and Pulau Galang (Indonesia). I make two main assertions. The first is that domestic religious practices matter in exploring issues of cultural citizenship and belonging. As a collection of things, I explain how altar assemblages are constituted through the purposeful and chance encounters of the practitioner(s), which is a way to talk about the global (such as transnational mobilities or the discourses about diasporic citizenship) through the intimately local. My second claim is that ideas of cultural citizenship can intersect with religious motivations and practices, and that they happen (are performed, imagined and circulated) transnationally, or more precisely, translocatively. I document how practitioners' and groups of practitioners' struggle to combat the (current Vietnamese) state's interventions in re-narrating the circumstances of their exile and also the relative invisibility they face as historical subjects in the United States. By carefully examining ancestral altars as a constitution of "things" and as situated "spaces," I address various facets of what they are and how they work -- as ways to express a familial or diasporic imaginary; or as assemblages of things that are both intimately meaningful and private, yet situated at the intersections of geopolitical engagements and cultural politics.Item The scent of fish sauce(2014-05) Trinh, Minh Dinh Le; Raval, P. J. (Paul James); Spiro , Ellen; Berg, Charles Ramírez; Lewis , AnneThe following report describes the conception, pre-production, production and post-production of Minh Trinh’s short-narrative thesis film. The report contains a deep discussion of the origin of the story, the writing process and the rationale behind the director’s artistic choices for the film.Item The United States Military Assistance Advisory Group in French Indochina, 1950-1956(2012-02-14) Weber, Nathaniel R.This thesis examines the American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) sent to French Indochina, from 1950 to 1956, when the United States provided major monetary and material aid to the French in their war against the communist Viet Minh. MAAG observed French units in the field and monitored the flow of American materiel into the region. Relying upon primary research in the National Archives, the thesis departs from previous interpretations by showing that MAAG held generally positive assessments of France?s performance in Indochina. The thesis also argues that MAAG personnel were more interested in getting material support to the French, than in how that material was used, to the point of making unrealistic assessments of French combat abilities. By connecting primary research with the greater history of Cold War American military assistance, the thesis contributes to the scholarship on American involvement in Vietnam.Item Waging brown water warfare: The mobile riverine force in the Mekong, 1966-1969(2006-08) Grau, Reagan Jay; Reckner, James R.; Walker, Donald R.The Mobile Riverine Force was a marraige of one US Army infantry brigade and one US Navy task force. Together the two units plied the rivers and canals of the Vietnam's Mekong delta searching for the Viet Cong. This thesis discusses some of the events leading up to and including American involvement in the Vietnam War. Aspects of the Mobile Riverine Force remain the primary focus including the formation of the Mobile Riverine Base, the command structure of the MRF, operations in the delta, and the construction of the base at Dong Tam.Item Waging brown water warfare: the mobile riverine force in the Mekong, 1966-1969(Texas Tech University, 2006-08) Grau, Reagan Jay; Reckner, James R.; Walker, Donald R.The Mobile Riverine Force was a marraige of one US Army infantry brigade and one US Navy task force. Together the two units plied the rivers and canals of the Vietnam's Mekong delta searching for the Viet Cong. This thesis discusses some of the events leading up to and including American involvement in the Vietnam War. Aspects of the Mobile Riverine Force remain the primary focus including the formation of the Mobile Riverine Base, the command structure of the MRF, operations in the delta, and the construction of the base at Dong Tam.