I have to do another Honors Project for this class :\
It has to be a museum exhibit... online...
I'm thinking of creating another blog just for this. I don't know how to create an entire website so the blog route is easier.
The theme is "The United States at War: Attitudes and Actions."
I just got started so I'm not sure where I'm going to go with it yet. I have to have 3 different events from 3 different decades between 1880-2000. So I guess I can do WWI and WWII, but not sure about the 3rd event. If you have any ideas, please share them.
In other news:
Alex was out playing hockey all by himself yesterday. His mom, dad, and sister were up at the ball fields. I went over since he was playing all by himself. The first thing he said to me was, "Just so you know, I'm leaving in like 5 minutes."
I just said, "Oh" in the most disappointing tone as possible :p
That 5 minutes actually turned into 10-15 minutes. Then he had to go up to the ball fields to see his cousin (I think) play softball.
I'm still waiting to sit out on his porch with him.
Should I ask him? I don't usually do that cos it is his porch after all. So he should be the one to ask right?
Dunno if anyone cares or not, but I finally got an xbox live account. My gamertag is pabond007. My game collection includes:
Medal of Honor: Airborne (MoH FTW!!)
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto IV
Quantum of Solace
Call of Duty 4
The Godfather (can't play this one online)
If you have any of those games and wanna play together, then send me a request or whatever.
I want/need to get a wireless network adapter for my xbox 360. That way I can move it back downstairs to the living room. There I can play it on a flat screen TV and surround sound. It's in my room now cos that's the only way I can play Live. It's currently hooked up to a mono 13" TV. Sound only comes out of one speaker -_-
A new recycling thing just arrived finally! The old one has been overflowing for weeks! Last week, Alex mentioned having stuff they can recycle, and that he will go up with me :) I just sent him a txt msg saying that I'm gonna go up later, and I'll take anything up that he has.
Back to school news:
My plan was to finish everything this week. Finals start next week so this is the last regular week. I wanted to finish a class each day. But I've got soooo much work in each class, it's not even funny. I swear it's like they realize the end of the year is here, and just pile on all the work they can -_- Pretty soon I'm gonna have to start working through the night.
So it may be awhile before you hear from me again...
9 comments:
Why not the Vietnam-war as third theme?! Good luck for your finals.
finals suck - good luck - see you when you re-emerge
Pilgrims Idea is good, you may even consider combining the Korean conflict with Vietnam., Maybe a sort of The U.S. in southeast Asia sort of thing. Or even the other route with the Spanish American War. If you go to my blog, the posts of the crazy pulp fiction novels. Well, Bobster is the original poster on flickr. Click on those links to get to his flickerpage. He has a shit ton of really great photos and war propaganda from the library of congress, from a pretty big time period. I Don't know if you'll want any photos but I'm pretty sure you could find some things there if you do. Best wishes for the project.
Hugz
Pilgrim and Sasha have pretty well covered them other than the Persian Gulf (90-91). Oh, 1961, Cuba - invasion of the Bay of Pigs.
Good luck with it, sounds interesting.
Attitudes and actions could cover a lot of possibilities. For instance, you could explore how the attitudes of their countrymen affected the leaders' conduct of war; or how the attitudes of individual commanders affected their discretionary choice of weapons, treatment of prisoners or willingness to risk collateral damage; or you could focus on strategic risk assessment, and how much commanders were prepared to expend to attain an objective. (Hitler sacrificed von Paulus' army at Stalingrad apparently because of his sense of pride alone.)
Your third war sould be either Vietnam or Korea. In both those conflicts the decisions made were severely proscribed by the desire to avoid a wider war, specifically, war with China. America and its United Nations allies did not want to bring China into the conflict by going across the Yalu River, but MacArthur's actions brought us too close for their comfort and they got involved anyway. In Vietnam, we didn't bomb North Vietnam's dikes or blockade Haiphong harbor because we were afraid China and Russia might get involved, and we didn't use tactical nuclear weapons because the public and the international community wouldn't countenance it. (This issue alone may have cost Barry Goldwater the 1964 presidential election.) By contrast, WWI and WWII involved all out war, with both sides using their most destructive weaponry, including gas and atomic weapons.
Consider the players involved in those wars. Democractic leaders were answerable to their electorates, so in the States Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson feared traditional American isolationism and dislike for protracted wars. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh didn't have to worry about such things.
How far does a commander go? Field Marshall Kesselring refused to fortify Monte Cassino Abbey because he felt it should not be a target because of its historic importance. The Allies didn't know this, so they destroyed the abbey anyway. Or consider Gen. von Choltitz's decision to disobey Hitler and not destroy Paris before the German retreat. You can contrast those men with Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, who insisted on firebombing Hamburg and Dresden when they no longer were of strategic importance. And there's always Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which undoubtedly saved lives on both sides but even now is occasionally denounced as a war crime.
There's a lot of great stuff to choose from here, so pick out something that interests you and you can best manage in your format.
Correction: No "von" in Paulus' name.
And I didn't mention Alex. That's because he's irrelevant. Face it, Peter, he just isn't into you.
I think the suggestions of Korea and Viet Nam are good ones and have been well explained.
Are you supposed to cover attitudes and actions throughout the entire wars or is it just the attitudes and actions with regard to a specific event within each war?
by 1952, a large part of the public had soured on the action in Korea. And so when Eisenhower said during the presidential campaign "I will go to Korea," meaning he would go to try to see how the fighting could be ended, it was a big boost to his campaign.
Of course, there was even stronger opposition to the war in Viet Nam.
perhaps you could talk about either america's role in bosnia in the late 90's
or vietnam i think would be a good one in terms of the attitude side of things
good luck with it
Peter
A third topic might focus around the remember the Maine slogan. Often blamed for leading us into conflict, the Spanish American Civil war and thought by many at the time to be a cuban act of war against an american ship in its waters. But latetr theories surround the idea that one of the ships boilers exploded accidently leading to the destruction of the ship.
good luck with school work
take care and be safe
bob
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