HST195 - Our Last Forums & Lesson Hello all, I've completed scoring your posts and replies in Forum 4. COMMENTS Congratulations on the constructive way you dealt with one another, helping each to learn the material better. It was commendable. While I'm certainly pleased with the growing number of interactions between group members, the overwhelming majority of posts or replies are occurring on only Wednesdays and Sundays, the deadline days. With tonight's initial post deadline, I hope you will not make the "early posters" wait for your replies and delay the important discussions you need to be having. And while this term's class has done the better job with well-reasoned observations and analysis of the forum materials, many students still seem averse to citing their historical sources when making claims. When you cite a source after having interpreted it correctly, it greatly bolsters your position. If you fail to cite, it can leave the reader wondering "how did you come to that conclusion?", especially if the conclusion is vague or unclear. Example: How do we know that either Nixon or Johnson would provide us with more accurate historical understanding of the war were they to participate in a documentary such as Fog of War? Fact 1: We do know how LBJ (Tet Episode) and his generals orchestrated a campaign of optimism just prior to 1968, stating that the "end was near" or that we could "see light at the end of the tunnel". He was not honest then, why would he be now? Citing this data would make your observation about McNamara, in the Fog of War video clip, all that more impressive. As some of you noted, even McNamara was dodgy on the issue of Agent Orange. He said, "I never in the world would have authorized an illegal action. I'm not really sure I authorized Agent Orange ? I don't remember it ? but it certainly occurred, the use of it occurred while I was Secretary." How about this quote from McNamara? "Historians don't really like to deal with counterfactuals, with what might have been. They want to talk about history. "And how the hell do you know, McNamara, what might have been? Who knows?" Well, I know certain things." Hey McNamara, if you know things, then TELL US. But the most egregious statement was when McNamara spoke to the Communist Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach at meeting in 1997. McNamara (in a rather heated manner, as some of you noticed) actually said the following to Thach: "What did you accomplish? You didn't get any more than we were willing to give you at the beginning of the war. You could have had the whole damn thing: independence, unification." WHAT AN INCREDIBLE LOAD OF B.S. I could spend the next 20 minutes citing pages from the early chapters of the Herring text, or using Episode 1 of the PBS series, to refute that claim. As long as we considered Ho a communist, the United States, led by any Cold Warrior Democrat or Republican President, weren't going to let North Vietnam have the "whole damn thing". (See PBS Episode 1 Introduction, where Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon claim the importance of a non-communist South Vietnam.) Fact 2: Nixon went on television (and even used a map of Southeast Asia) to explain to the American people why he was going into Cambodia to pursue the North Vietnamese operations on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. (Concerning Cambodia, Nixon gets blamed for "invading" a neutral country. For the record, North Vietnamese communists were absolutely operating within that "neutral" country. So for Nixon to catch hell and for the Ho's Communist North Vietnamese to be given a "pass" is a hypocritical, unfair, and historically un-true position to take.) BUT, the purpose here is NOT to excuse Nixon. Instead, in a rare moment of "openness", and bringing his case to the American people, he was ridiculed and attacked for it. Public demonstrations and Kent State (1970) resulted. I don't know about you, but that's the last time I'd be forthcoming with information. I assume Nixon would maintain that stance in any Fog of War documentary interview he'd agree to give today. So, be sure to cite your sources, support your claims, and strongly make your cases in the last half of our final Forum 5 this week. And be sure to use Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, as well as Sunday, to earn ALL of your required points. WEEK 10 HISTORY LESSON I'll make a couple of historical observations that I hope all of you keep in mind as we head through this last week of class. As many of you pointed out, Tet was a turning point, but to conclude that the end of the war was "at hand" would be incorrect. The Commander-in-Chief changed that year, and so would U.S. foreign policy. Vietnamese casualties would increase after Tet, and American forces would not be withdrawn until 1973, nearly four years later. It would be another two years until Saigon fell to the NVA. While it is true that a just over 50% of Americans polled began to see U.S. involvement in Vietnam a mistake after 1968, "polled" Americans does NOT equal "all" Americans. The biggest mistake students studying the Vietnam War make is to take this poll and conclude that a majority of Americans became active protesters against the war. That is just not historically correct. I've put a video clip online in Moodle which introduces you to this group of "hard hats" which rarely make it to the pages of history books on the war. (As you might recall from the Accuracy in Media videos in the first half of this class, other pro-administration/hawk/"patriotic" marches and demonstrations were often ignored by the media at that time.) Be sure you watch the clip, which involves Kent State and reflections by people who were asked to have their reactions and memories recored for posterity in a documentary series called The Class of the 20th Century. After seeing this clip, students automatically conclude that Richard Nixon could not have been a popular president, given his actions in Vietnam and later Watergate and he subsequent resignation from office. To counter that simplified but inaccurate view, I implore you to look at election results in Wikipedia. (Basically, take a look at Nixon's election result numbers, electoral vote, map of the USA). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1972 The 1972 election result are AFTER Tet, AFTER My Lai, and AFTER Kent State. And in 1972, McGovern was the anti-war candidate! Given these historical facts, take care as you study the final years of the war in our final week of class. Be cautious and avoid arriving at conclusions that you cannot support with data from the historical record.