Author: Raymond A. Patton File Type: pdf In March 1977, John Johnny Rotten Lydon of the punk band the Sex Pistols looked over the Berlin wall onto the grey, militarized landscape of East Berlin, which reminded him of home in London. Lydon went up to the wall and extended his middle finger. He didnt know it at the time, but the Sex Pistols reputation had preceded his gesture, as young people in the Second World busily appropriated news reports on degenerate Western culture as punk instruction manuals. Soon after, burgeoning Polish punk impresario Henryk Gajewski brought the London punk band the Raincoats to perform at his art gallery and student club-the epicenter for Warsaws nascent punk scene. When the Raincoats returned to England, they found London erupting at the Rock Against Racism concert, which brought together 100,000 First World UK punks and Third World Caribbean immigrants who contributed their cultures of reggae and Rastafarianism. Punk had formed networks reaching across all three of the Cold Wars worlds. The first global narrative of punk, Punk Crisis examines how transnational punk movements challenged the global order of the Cold War, blurring the boundaries between East and West, North and South, communism and capitalism through performances of creative dissent. As author Raymond A. Patton argues, punk eroded the boundaries and political categories that defined the Cold War Era, replacing them with a new framework based on identity as conservative or progressive. Through this paradigm shift, punk unwittingly ushered in a new era of global neoliberalism. **

Author: Gregory A. Daddis File Type: pdf Conventional wisdom holds that the US Army in Vietnam, thrust into an unconventional war where occupying terrain was a meaningless measure of success, depended on body counts as its sole measure of military progress. In No Sure Victory, Army officer and historian Gregory Daddis looks far deeper into the Armys techniques for measuring military success and presents a much more complicated-and disturbing-account of the American misadventure in Indochina. Daddis shows how the US Army, which confronted an unfamiliar enemy and an even more unfamiliar form of warfare, adopted a massive, and eventually unmanageable, system of measurements and formulas to track the progress of military operations that ranged from pacification efforts to search-and-destroy missions. The Armys monthly Measurement of Progress reports covered innumerable aspects of the fighting in Vietnam-force ratios, VietcongNorth Vietnamese Army incidents, tactical air sorties, weapons losses, security of base areas and roads, population control, area control, and hamlet defenses. Concentrating more on data collection and less on data analysis, these indiscriminate attempts to gauge success may actually have hindered the armys ability to evaluate the true outcome of the fight at hand--a roadblock that Daddis believes significantly contributed to the many failures that American forces suffered in Vietnam. Filled with incisive analysis and rich historical detail, No Sure Victory is not only a valuable case study in unconventional warfare, but a cautionary tale that offers important perspectives on how to measure performance in current and future armed conflict. Given Americas ongoing counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, No Sure Victory provides valuable historical perspective on how to measure--and mismeasure--military success.ReviewThis timely and important book is a major addition to the military history of the Vietnam War. It should be required reading for those grappling with the issues posed by counterinsurgency wars today.--George C. Herring, Alumni Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kentucky, and author of From Colony to SuperpowerIn No Sure Victory, Gregory Daddis has asked questions about the past that speak directly to the present How should progress in a counterinsurgency war be measured? What is the defi nition of victory-and what is its meaning? The effort of the US military and civilian command to answer these questions and their ultimate failure to do so is the burden of Daddis book. He writes as a professional soldier as well as an historian, and his meticulously researched and carefully argued account makes a signifi cant contribution to the ongoing effort to understand the Vietnam War.--Marilyn B. Young, Professor of History, New York University, and author of The Vietnam WarsStunning in its research and highly sophisticated in its analysis, No Sure Victory is far and away the best study we have of the way the US Army measured its performance during the Vietnam War. Daddis argues that US strategists were far more interested in data collection than they were in data analysis. This failure had a dramatic impact on the conduct and outcome of the war. An important study with monumental implications for US military policy in the future.--Robert Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, Vassar College...Engaging...Daddis has written a provocative and well-researched book...It will be of value to both students and historians of the Vietnam War, in addition to military professionals interested in contemporary counterinsurgency operations. -- Vietnam Magazine No Sure Victory is a thought-provoking look at a problem that is both perennial and current...essential reading for anyone concerned with our current and probable future conflicts. Deeply researched and revealing -- VVA VeteranDaddis ... probes more deeply than anyone has previously done into the armys Measurements of Progress Reports, and the collective inability to agree on a set of meaningful dominant indicators of military and political effectiveness.--Times Literary Supplement About the AuthorGregory A. Daddis is Academy Professor of History at the United States Military Academy, West Point, and a Colonel in the US Army. A West Point graduate, he has served in numerous army command and staff positions in the United States and overseas and is a veteran of both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. He is the author of Fighting in the Great Crusade An 8th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II.