Mrflores.weebly.com



Divisive Issues ChartDirections: Use the "Divisive Issue" readings and other available resources to fill in the following chart.===============================================================The Issue Describe the issue divided the country Explain how the issue ===============================================================The Draft ________________________________________________________________________Pentagon Papers ________________________________________________________________________Kent State ________________________________________________________________________Undeclared War ________________________________________________________________________Escalation ________________________________________________________________________Napalm ________________________________________________________________________My LaiDivisive Issue: The DraftThe following excerpt describes how men could be drafted into the armed forces during the war:Nothing occupied the minds of young people more during the Vietnam era than did the draft. If a 19-year-old was about to be drafted, he found himself unable to get a job. He could not borrow money or do many of the things adults can do. College students, high school graduates, and dropouts found ways to avoid the draft. Not everyone avoided it, however, or even tried. A small town in rural upper Michigan had 11 boys in a high school graduating class who all joined the military in the same year. Every one of these boys was killed later in Vietnam.Draft boards, made up of local people, could determine how many local men were sent off. For example, Texas had 7 percent of the U.S. population and 4 percent of those in the military. Michigan had 4 percent of the population but 7 percent of those in the armed forces.U.S. troop strength in Vietnam reached its peak in the spring of 1969. One year later, draft laws were changed. A national lottery system was created. The federal government said a lottery would make the draft more fair. Officials hoped it might stem the tide of young men who dodged the draft. The government also believed that making the draft less controversial would decrease opposition to the war.Here is how the new system worked: All potential draftees were assigned a number drawn by chance. That number was based on their date of birth. For example, all 19-year-olds with a birthday of January 4 could be in the 193rd group to be called up that year. Those men with birthdates matched to numbers 250 through 365 did not have to worry much about being called. This did not make the draft more fair; some people could still receive deferments. But it made the draft *appear* to be fair.From David K. Wright, War in Vietnam: Book IV-- Fall of Vietnam (Chicago: Children's Press, 1989), pp. 32-34.In the following excerpt from 1967, a professor of religion at Stanford University explains why he will aid young men to avoid being drafted:I teach. I spend my professional life with American youth of draft age. And while I will not use the classroom for such purposes, I will make clear that from now on my concerns about Vietnam will be explicitly focused on counseling, aiding and abetting all students who declare that out of moral conviction they will not fight in Vietnam.I will 'counsel, aid and abet' such students to find whatever level of moral protest is consonant with their consciences, and when for them this means refusing service in the armed forces, I will support them in that stand. In doing so, I am committing a Federal offense, for the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 specifically states that anyone who 'knowingly counsels, aids or abets another to refuse or evade registration or service in the armed forces' opens himself to the same penalties as are visited upon the one he so counsels, aids and abets, namely up to five years in jail or up to $10,000 in fines, or both.I will continue to do this until I am arrested. As long as I am not arrested, I will do it with increasing intensity, for I am no longer willing that 18- or 19-year old boys should pay with their lives for the initially bumbling but now deliberate folly of our national leaders. Nor am I willing to support them in action that may lead them to jail, from a safe preserve of legal inviolability for myself. I must run the same risks as they, and therefore I break the law on their behalf, so that if they are arrested, I too must be arrested.From The Annals of America, vol.18 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), pp. 557-558Divisive Issue: Pentagon PapersDaniel Ellsberg is a former U.S. Marine and military analyst who precipitated a constitutional crisis in 1971 when he released the "Pentagon Papers." The papers comprised the U.S. military's account of theater activities during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg released top secret documents to The New York Times. His release of the Pentagon Papers succeeded in substantially eroding public support for the Vietnam War. A succession of related events, including Watergate, eventually led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation.The Pentagon Papers were mostly an indictment of the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, but they fed the Nixon administration's preoccupation with finding information and document leakers. They eventually led to the secret White House "Plumbers" group and then to Watergate. In its turn, Watergate led to the first resignation of an American president, Richard M. Nixon. The Pentagon Papers contained plans to invade Vietnam, even though President Johnson had told the public that he had no intention to stage an invasion.Ellsberg, born April 7, 1931, grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Cranbrook School, followed by Harvard University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics in 1959, in which he described a paradox in decision theory now known as the "Ellsberg Paradox." He served as a company commander in the Marine Corps for two years and then became an analyst at the Rand Corporation. A committed Cold War warrior, he served in the Pentagon in 1964 under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He then served for two years in Vietnam as a civilian in the State Department, and became convinced that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.Ellsberg believed there was a consensus in the Defense and State departments that the United States had no realistic chance of victory in Vietnam, but that political considerations prevented them from saying so publicly. McNamara and others continued to state in press interviews that victory was "just around the corner." As the war continued to worsen, Ellsberg became deeply disillusioned.Daniel Ellsberg gave an interview with Look magazine in which he explained his action:[Interviewer]: If you want someone reading this to take a single lesson away from the Pentagon papers, what would you say he should get out of them?[Ellsberg]: I will say this: Everybody knows the slogan 'Power corrupts.' But have we believed it? For Americans? We've really paid very little attention to the possibility that something like absolute power for the President of the United States could be enormously corrupting.Do you realize that there's not a hint in any piece of legislation, to my knowledge, that says the President does not have the legal constitutional right tomorrow to send out all the nuclear forces of the United States to explode their weapons in pursuit of our national interests? There is no limitation that he has to consult Congress or the courts or the public or the press before he does that. Nobody else in the history of the world has had that degree of power. It's a very corrupting thought....[Interviewer]: Do you want these men who were attracted to power, the Bundys, the Rostows, the McNamaras, punished?[Ellsberg]: The punishment I want for them is that which I have had to suffer. I want them to be compelled to read every page of the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon documents, to see their own decisions laid end to end in the context of all the other decisions made during that period.Beyond that, I would like them exposed, as I was, to the human physical impact of their decisions on the people of Indochina. I would like them to know what happened as a result of the bombing. I want them to see the footage that never got on television of the wounded children, of the defoliation, of the refugee camps, of the impact of this war on Indochina. And then I want them to decide for themselves what they ought to do.From The Annals of America, vol 19 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, Inc., Chicago), pp. 235-236.Divisive Issue: Kent StateThe following excerpt describes an incident at Kent State University in 1970:The storm of protest created by the invasion of Cambodia dwarfed previous outcries against the Vietnam War. Public indignation was heard loudest on the nation's campuses. From one coast to another, students took to the streets, blocking traffic, starting bonfires, and smashing the windows of federal buildings. Student anger might have subsided had not a tragic drama unfolded on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. A crowd of five or six hundred students was demonstrating against the war. After the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) building was set afire, the governor of Ohio called out the National Guard. Students threw rocks and paving stones at the soldiers. Suddenly there was a crack of rifle fire. To the horror of the students who had collected, four of their number lay dead on the ground and nine lay wounded.News of the student deaths spread across the United States as fast as radio and television could carry it. Within hours, angry students all around the nation had begun to demonstrate. The newspaper editors of the major eastern colleges and universities met and agreed to run a common editorial calling upon 'the entire academic community of this country to engage in a nationwide university strike to protest widening U.S. participation in the war in southeastern Asia.'From E.B. Fincher, The Vietnam War (New York: Franklin Watts, 1980), pp. 52-54.The following excerpt is taken from the "Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest" which investigated the incident on Kent State campus:The May 4 rally began as a peaceful assembly on the Commons-- the traditional site of student assemblies. Even if the Guard had authority to prohibit a peaceful gathering --question that is at least debatable-- the decision to disperse the noon rally was a serious error. The timing and manner of the dispersal were disastrous. Many students were legitimately in the area as they went to and from class. The rally was held during the crowded noontime luncheon period. The rally was peaceful, and there was no apparent impending violence. Only when the Guard attempted to disperse the rally did some students react violently.Under these circumstances, the Guard's decision to march through the crowd for hundreds of yards up and down a hill was highly questionable. The crowd simply swirled around them and reformed again after they had passed...Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.From The Annals of America, vol. 19, pp. 133-134Divisive Issue: Undeclared War1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Tonkin Gulf resolution, in U.S. history, Congressional resolution passed in 1964 that authorized military action in Southeast Asia. On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action. On Aug. 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia. Although there was disagreement in Congress over the precise meaning of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Presidents Johnson and Richard M. Nixon used it to justify later military action in Southeast Asia. The measure was repealed by Congress in 1970. Retired Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1995 meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, and in 2001 it was revealed that President Johnson, in a taped conversation with McNamara several weeks after passage of the resolution, had expressed doubt that the attack ever occurred.In an open letter to Congress, this father of a Marine who had died in Vietnam complained of Congressional inaction:WE WISH TO EXPRESS our sincere thanks to the Congress of the United States for their continuing inactivity in regard to their Constitutional responsibilities regarding the Vietnam war.Because of your inactivity towards stopping our participation in this useless and senseless war, we have lost our only son, and only child, to a Vietnam contracted disease.In fact, because I am an only son of an only son, the senseless death of our son will eliminate our family name for all time.Yes, we know we are not the only ones who have lost a loved one in this nonsensical war-- and that makes it even more senseless.How, Gentlemen, can you justify the loss of over 45,000 young American boys' lives in that hell-on-earth for what we have gotten in return, or ever hope to get in return? In fact, Gentlemen, how can you possibly sleep at night when you know that you have been able all along to stop this useless slaughter, if by no other means, than to stop the flow of money to the Armed Forces.If I understand our Constitution correctly, no President of the United States has the right to commit anywhere near the number of troops being used in Vietnam combat, on foreign soil, without first obtaining the full sanction of the U.S. Congress. Yet you have stood by and let three successive Presidents do just exactly that.An, Gentlemen, for every week you continue to sit on your hands, another 200-300 or more American boys die over there-- and for what?From The Annals of America, vol. 19, pp. 84-85.Divisive Issue: EscalationThe following excerpt defines "escalation" and explains how it worked during the Vietnam War: When two sides in a conflict respond to each other's actions with greater and greater force, the process is known as escalation. Like the steps of an escalator, the number of soldiers rises higher and higher, and the number of battles, injuries, and deaths goes up with it. This is what happened in Vietnam. The Vietcong and the United States began to fight each other with more and more soldiers and firepower. When the number of attacks on U.S. servicemen increased in 1964, President Johnson decided to begin bombing North Vietnam, which helped the Vietcong with weapons and supplies. The bombing, in turn, led the Vietcong to attack more American troops. The U.S. responded by sending more troops to Vietnam. From December 1964 to June 1965, the number of American ground forces in Vietnam more than tripled, from 23,500 to 75,000.From Harry Nickelson, Vietnam (San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1989), pp. 37-38. In 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy described the failures of escalation: The reversals of the last several months have led our military to ask for 206,000 more troops. This weekend, it was announced that some of them-- a 'moderate' increase, it was said-- would soon be sent. But isn't this exactly what we have always done in the past? If we examine the history of this conflict, we find the dismal story repeated time after time. Every time-- at every crisis-- we have denied that anything was wrong; sent more troops; and insured more confident communication. Every time, we have been assured that this one last step would bring victory. And every time, the predictions and promises have failed and been forgotten, and the demand has been made again for just one more step up the ladder. But all the escalations, all the last steps, have brought us no closer to success than we were before. Rather, as the scale of the fighting has increased, South Vietnamese society has become less and less capable of organizing or defending itself, and we have more and more assumed the whole burden of the war. And once again, the President tells us, as we have been told for twenty years, that 'we are going to win;' 'victory' is coming. But what are the true facts? What is our present situation? From Diane Ravitch ed., The American Reader: Words That Moved A Nation (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990), pp. 344-345.Divisive Issue: NapalmAs the United States is the most advanced industrial nation in world it was able to make full use of the latest developments in technology in its war against North Vietnam. B-52 bombers, that could fly at heights that prevented them being seen or heard, dropped 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. This was over three times the amount of bombs dropped throughout the whole of the Second World War and worked out at approximately 300 tons for every man, woman and child living in Vietnam.As well as explosive bombs the United States Air Force dropped a considerable number of incendiary devices. The most infamous of these was napalm, a mixture of petrol and a chemical thickener which produces a tough sticky gel that attaches itself to the skin. The igniting agent, white phosphorus, continues burning for a considerable amount of time. A reported three quarters of all napalm victims in Vietnam were burned through to the muscle and bone (fifth degree burns). The pain caused by the burning is so traumatic that it often causes death.The US also made considerable use of anti-personnel bombs. The pineapple bomb was made up of 250 metal pellets inside a small canister. Gloria Emerson, a reporter in Vietnam, witnessed their use: "An American plane could drop a thousand pineapples over an area the size of four football fields. In a single air strike two hundred and fifty thousand pellets were spewed in a horizontal pattern over the land below, hitting everything on the ground."The United States also experimented with the use of plastic rather than metal needles and pellets in their antipersonnel bombs. The advantage of plastic was they could not be identified by X-Ray machines. Dropped on highly populated areas, antipersonnel bombs could severely disrupt the functioning of North Vietnam. It has been claimed that the major objective of the US bombing raids on North Vietnam was not to kill its 17 million population but to maim them. As was pointed out at the time, serious injury is more disruptive than death as people have to be employed to look after the injured where they only have to bury the dead.One of the major problems of the US forces was the detection of the National Liberation Front hiding in the forests of Vietnam. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy approved Operation Ranch Hand. This involved the spraying of chemicals from the air in an attempt to destroy the National Liberation Front hiding places. In 1969 alone, Operation Ranch Hand destroyed 1,034,300 hectares of forest. Agent Orange, the chemical used in this defoliation program not only destroyed trees but caused chromosomal damage in people.Chemicals were also sprayed on crops. Between 1962 and 1969, 688,000 agricultural acres were sprayed with a chemical called Agent Blue. The aim of this exercise was to deny food to the NLF. However, research suggests that it was the civilian population who suffered most from the poor rice harvests that followed the spraying.When a report appeared in the St. Louis Dispatch about the dropping of "poison" on North Vietnam the United States denied the herbicide they were using was a chemical weapon. It was claimed that Agent Orange and Agent Blue were harmless to humans and only had a short-lived impact on the environment. This was disputed by international experts and 5,000 American scientists, including 17 Nobel prize winners and 129 members of the Academy of Sciences, signed a petition against chemical and biological weapons being used in Vietnam. However, it was not until 1974 that the United States government stopped using Agent Orange and Agent Blue.During the war about 10% of Vietnam was intensively sprayed with 72 million liters of chemicals, of which 66% was Agent Orange. Some of this landed on their own troops and soon after the war ended veterans began complaining about serious health problems. There was also a high incidence of their children being born limbless or with Down's syndrome and spina bifida. The veterans sued the defoliant manufacturers and this was settled out of court in 1984 by the payment of $180 million.The TCCD dioxin used in Agent Orange seeped into the soil and water supply, and therefore into the food chain. In this way it passed from mother to fetus in the womb. In Vietnam the dioxide remains in the soil and is now damaging the health of the grandchildren of the war's victims. A report published in 2003 claimed that 650,000 people in Vietnam were still suffering from chronic conditions as a result of the chemicals dropped on the country during the war. Since the war the Vietnamese Red Cross has registered an estimated one million people disabled by Agent Orange. It is estimated that 500,000 people in Vietnam have died from the numerous health problems created by these chemical weapons.Source: Issue: My LaiThe following excerpt describes an incident in a village in Vietnam and its aftermath: ...on March 16, 1968, a terrible event had taken place in a Vietnamese village named My Lai (pronounced Me Lie). At 7 a.m., helicopters dropped about two hundred American soldiers into the area around My Lai. Before leaving their base, the soldiers had been told by other officers that My Lai was a Viet Cong stronghold. They were to wipe out everyone they found, because, as one soldier recalled later, 'those people that were in the village--the women, the kids, the old men--were VC.' The soldiers needed no urging. Not long before, a popular sergeant in the unit had been killed by a Viet Cong booby trap. The men wanted revenge, and when they moved into the village, they showed no mercy. They began by setting fire to the village huts and raping some of the women and girls. Before long, the men lost all control and started to fire wildly at anything that moved, even the cattle, pigs, and chickens. A large group of villagers were herded into a ditch and raked by machine guns. When one soldier refused to fire, his commanding officer, Lieutenant William Calley, threatened to report him for disobeying an officer's order. The official report of the action described My Lai as a military victory, with 128 Viet Cong added to the body count. The task-force commander called the mission 'well planned, well executed, and successful.' Many higher officers knew the real story, but ignored it. Some of the soldiers who were at My Lai were disturbed by what happened and told others about it. One soldier, who was appalled by what he heard, sent letters to the army and Congress asking for an investigation. But nothing happened until November 1969, when reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story. Dozens of American newspapers printed Hersh's article. Life magazine obtained photographs of the slaughter from a soldier who had been on the scene. The piled-up bodies of the villagers appeared in full color in one of the country's leading magazines. The American public was stunned. My Lai caused a national soul-searching on the whole question of what we were doing in Vietnam-- and what Vietnam was doing to us. The mother of one of the soldiers at My Lai said, 'I sent them a good boy, and they made him a murderer.' Three officers and a sergeant who led the troops at My Lai were accused of atrocities, or crimes against civilians. But only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted-- in his case, of killing twenty-two people, including babies. Calley's testimony that the My Lai operation was 'no big deal' added to Americans' horror and disgust. However, because Calley's superior officers were not punished, many people felt he was a scapegoat who took the blame for a complete breakdown in army discipline. A military court sentenced Calley to life imprisonment, but the secretary of the army reduced that to ten years. Calley was paroled after serving three years under house arrest at a military base. From Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, Vietnam: Why We Fought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), pp. 154-155.Divisive Issues: Political CartoonsThe Vietnam War was characterized by issues which deeply divided America. After reading the Divisive Issues readings and filling in you Divisive Issues chart, choose TWO divisive issues to represent in political cartoons. Each of the cartoons should portray how the issue divided the nation. The criteria for each of the TWO cartoons are: each cartoon clearly indicates how the issue divided the nation each cartoon has a brief, but clear explanation of the message portrayed by the cartoon each cartoon used appropriate and clear symbols each cartoon is neat, of "final copy" quality, and shows effort on your part Divisive Issues Political Cartoons: Assessment Criteria Divisive Issues: Each of the TWO political cartoons clearly indicates how the issue chosen divided the nation. The two cartoons each clearly show an issue. 20Both cartoons show an issue, but not clearly. 15 At least one cartoon show an issue adequately. 10 The cartoons do not show divisive issues. 5Meaning: The meanings of both political cartoons are for each one. The meanings are clearly explained in a brief, but clear explanation. 10 The meanings are explained, but not clearly for all. 7The meaning of one cartoon is clearly explained. 4None of the meanings of the cartoons are explained. 1Symbols: The symbols used in the cartoons clearly stand for what the author intended. All of the symbols chosen are clear. 5Some of the symbols are clear, many are not 3 The symbols chosen for the cartoons are unclear. 1Neatness: Each cartoon is "final copy" quality and shows effort. The cartoons are neatly drawn. 5The cartoons are fairly neat. 3The cartoons appear to be mess. 1 36-40 = A32-35 = B28-31 = C24-27 = D0- 23 = FGROUP MEMBERS____________________________________________________TOTAL SCORE_______________ YOUR GRADE________________ ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download