Times of Change Memorial Day reading: Note to Soldiers

Dear American Soldiers and Troops ,

Thank you all for serving your country. All of you served in Vietnam and died in the effort to preserve democracy and contain communism. Thank you all for your sacrifice.

Times of Change readings Section 2

Reading #1 Jack Smith.

1. Challenges Jack faces:
   Jack is young and inexperienced
   Jack is with a group of very inexperienced men
   Jack was wounded and dazed, but still survived
   The "Skyraiders" drop bombs and napalm on their own men
   
2. Over time Jack’s attitude about the war changes. He starts out not thinking he would serve, that the war in Vietnam was far away and that he would not be sent. When he is sent, all of that changes. He sees all of the deaths and the wounded men, and becomes bitter. It takes him many years to rid himself of those feelings of misanthropy and gloom.
   

Reading #2 I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag

1. The song asks: the big strong men to join the army and fight, the generals to move fast and attack the commies, Wall Street to make money on the war, and the mothers to send their boys to Vietnam
2. “What are we fighting for”, “Whoopee! We’re all gonna die”, “To have your boy come home in a box”, “We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun”
   Reading #3 Farmer Nguyen, Massacre at My Lai, and A Nun at Ninh Hoa
   These poems show that the war really hurt the people of Vietnam. The massacre at My Lai killed almost 350 innocent children, women, and babies. Also, anyone who had any connection with the Viet Cong, real or rumor, was treated harshly or killed.

Reading #3 Farmer Nguyen, Massacre at My Lai, and A Nun at Ninh Hoa

1. These poems show that the war really hurt the people of Vietnam. The massacre at My Lai killed almost 350 innocent children, women, and babies. Also, anyone who had any connection with the Viet Cong, real or rumor, was treated harshly or killed.

Times of Change readings Section 1

Reading # 1 Dubious Crusade

1. Dubious: doubtful or questionable. Crusade: A war for a belief or cause.
2. Warren is wondering if the 57,000 US deaths in Vietnam were worth it. I think that maybe one of our essential questions will be whether the war was worth it.

Reading #2 History

1. The overall theme of this poem is that there was too much killing in the Vietnam war.

Reading #3 Gulf of Tonkin Resolutioin

1. The main thesis of this essay is that the "Gulf of Tonkin Resoulution" was based upon a lie.
2. The GoTR was a resoultion allowing the build up of arms for the Vietnam war.
3. The evidence that is given is simply the lack of evidence that American vessel(s) were attacked by Viet Cong. The Maddox took no damage, and there is no evidence that it actually was the Viet Cong that attacked them.
4. This reading links to the "Dubious Crusade" in its doubt about the necessity of the warthat cost 57,000 lives.

Korean War

Ten things people should know about the Korean War:

• The Korean War started in 1950 when North Korean communists crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the more democratic South Korea.
• Angered by this communist invasion, the US and UN backed South Korea and pushed North Korean forces back almost to the northern border, the Yalu River.
• China, seeing the UN forces so close, felt threatened and backed NK.
• China's retaliation pushed back the UN forces past the 38th
• The war dragged on and became unpopular.
• American General Douglas MacArthur was the main general of the war.
• MacArthur wanted to bomb and invade China, but president Truman declines.
• Truman began a series of peace talks with the Chinese
• In the middle of the war (1952) a new president, Dwight D Eisenhower, was elected.
• The war became a stalemate, and an armistice was signed, setting a DMZ at about the 38th parallel to seperate N and S Korea.

Unit 8 Preview

After hearing about unit 8, I am looking forward to all of the things we will cover. The Civil Rights movement, the Korean war, and the Vietnam war are all things that stand out. The fact that now we are learning about more current things that have a huge impact on life today makes this unit even more interesting.

Has MLK's dream been realized?

Martin Luther King's dream was for the equality of the races. In terms of labor, this is not yet true. Blacks comprise 13% of the population, but only make up 10.7% of the employed workforce. That alone is not so bad, but the percentage of African Americans in management positions is only 5.9%, and only 3.2% are CEO's. Black people have come very far since the 1960's, but they still have a ways to go in terms of labor.

In response to the Time essay: Martin Luther King

The author of this article feels that whites owe Dr. King a great debt because he was the man who really freed the US. Before King, America was not and could not claim to be a free and unprejudiced nation. He argues that without King, there still would have been great prejudice and discrimination during the cold war, and thus a horrible perversity in the motive of the US to challenge the opressive Russian dictatorship, when America still opressed its own people.

Martin Luther King was most certainly the right man at the right time, but I believe that even if he had been born after the civil rights movement, he would have become a great icon. He was one of those people, like Abraham Lincoln, who lived at the right time in the right place, but would have become great under any circumstances at almost any time in our nations history.

Later in the article, the question of the use of Dr. King's most famous quote —"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"— was adressed. The article brings up the fact that this quote is used by people who are against affirmative action, and goes on to suggest that King would not condone such usage. Obviously since Dr. King is dead we cannot know for sure how he would have felt, but I believe that he would be okay with how the quote is used. Dr. King would push for the absolute equality of the races now as he pushed for it then.