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Use discount code 18hldy23 and receive a 40% discount if used bu January 5, 2024.
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Episode 2675 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an interview with Robert J. Thompson about his new book Clear, Hold and Destroy. Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast, has procured not only the author but two of his associate academics, Samantha Taylor and Kevin Boylan to come on the podcast and discuss this important new book about the American Vietnam War. The most profound idea coming from the book is that no one could provide an acceptable definition of “Pacification.”
A native of Alexandria, Virginia, Dr. Thompson’s current work as a historian with the Army University Press film team includes researching, writing and directing documentaries to educate viewers on U.S. Army history and doctrine. Clear, Hold and Destroy began as his dissertation at USM.
The book description includes this: By the end of the American War in Vietnam, the coastal province of Phú Yên was one of the least-secure provinces in the Republic of Vietnam. It was also a prominent target of the American strategy of pacification—an effort, purportedly separate and distinct from conventional warfare, to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. In Robert J. Thompson III’s analysis, the consistent, and consistently unsuccessful, struggle to place Phú Yên under Saigon’s banner makes the province particularly fertile ground for studying how the Americans advanced pacification and why this effort ultimately failed.
In March 1970 a disastrous military engagement began in Phú Yên, revealing the enemy’s continued presence after more than three years of pacification. Clear, Hold, and Destroy provides a fresh perspective on the war across multiple levels, from those making and implementing policy to those affected by it. Most pointedly, Thompson contends that pacification, far from existing apart from conventional warfare, actually depended on conventional military forces for its application.
A sharply focused, fine-grained analysis of one critical province during the Vietnam War, Thompson’s work demonstrates how pacification is better understood as the foundation of U.S. fighting in Vietnam.
Listen to episode 2675 and discover more about Robert J. Thompson’s new book Clear, Hold and Destroy.
