{"id":194,"date":"2011-11-19T15:08:38","date_gmt":"2011-11-19T15:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/?p=194"},"modified":"2011-12-21T14:40:31","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T14:40:31","slug":"exam-4-on-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/2011\/11\/exam-4-on-monday\/","title":{"rendered":"Exam 4 on Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our Unit 4 exam will be on Monday, Nov 21. I am out of town presenting at a conference (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaarweb.org\">the AAR<\/a> in San Francisco) but Dr. Lisa Boehm from Urban Studies will be there in my place to give out and collect the exam. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving break and I&#8217;ll see you on the other side of the turkey and pie.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday in class, I wrote a list on the board of 11 reasons former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (whose resignation is covered in your book) thought &#8212; in retrospect &#8212; that the United States had blundered in Vietnam. Here is the list, and for you snorkelers\/divers, you can <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=c2BIsKgZQlUC&amp;pg=PA381&amp;lpg=PA381&amp;dq=robert+mcnamara+vietnam+retrospective&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=U_Z3bSkeUa&amp;sig=BMWe50fpvmYpU_q21XG6IDgEEB8&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=pMPHToGIBaKziQKOlKjoDw&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=6&amp;ved=0CEcQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">read excerpts on Google Books<\/a> from the original if you like. Think about whether you agree with this list and what evidence you can think of to support or refute McNamara&#8217;s statements.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We misjudged North Vietnamese and Viet Cong&#8217;s geopolitical intentions and exaggerated their dangers<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We viewed South Vietnam in terms of our own experience instead of theirs<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We underestimated the power of Vietnamese nationalism<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We didn&#8217;t have enough trained advisors for Asia in positions of responsibility in the military and the State Department, and had too few well-informed senior diplomats<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It was high-tech warfare v. low-tech people and failed to win their hearts and minds<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Didn&#8217;t involve Congress and public debate enough<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Didn&#8217;t retain popular support at home, were too secretive<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We have no &#8220;God-given right to shape every nation in our image&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It was a unilateral action and all unilateral actions are doomed<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Although the US is powerful and rich, it can&#8217;t solve every problem in every nation<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It proved too hard to sustain a long-term effort and momentum over many different presidential administrations at the top levels of the military<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>My recommendations for studying:<\/strong> review Chapter 30 closely. Be able to identify, list or discuss events that happened during the Vietnam Era both in the US and in the region of Vietnam. Have a working understanding of how the conflict began, how it progressed, and how it ended. Be able to distinguish among anti-war organizations and talk about the rise &amp; fall of a protest movement and some of its main events. Consider your notes from the M*A*S*H episode and what cultural productions like that program add to our historical understanding of the era. Re-read Theriault&#8217;s article and be prepared to discuss the contradictions and complexities of the Vietnam Memorial, and of the wall&#8217;s role in American public memory about the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Unit 4 exam will be on Monday, Nov 21. I am out of town presenting at a conference (the AAR in San Francisco) but Dr. Lisa Boehm from Urban Studies will be there in my place to give out and collect the exam. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving break and I&#8217;ll see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-study-strategies","tag-fall11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tonahangen.com\/wsc\/us2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}