Required Reading:
Vietnam outline,
1965-68 and troop deployment
America
Divided 229-248 (note that this is
slightly changed from the on-line syllabus, pagination is off slightly in
syllabus)
And the following on-line
readings: Poor
People’s Movement Walker
Commission on Chicago Democratic Convention Tom
Hayden on Chicago 7 trial
Follow up to Hearts and Minds: (for
those who were permitted to view the movie outside of assigned time, please
turn in a review of the movie, addressing as many of these questions to indicate
you actually viewed it.) What did you think of the film? How did it affect your
opinion of the war on Vietnam? If you did not attend film but obtained it
elsewhere, here is a list of cast of
characters. Why was the movie named “Hearts and Minds?” What were the
justifications used by the father of the pilot killed in Vietnam? What do you
think about Randy Floyd’s comments
about not learning the lessons of Vietnam?
For important follow-up on the film see highlighted links below. Think about the images of
death and destruction that were portrayed so graphically, and the “smart” bombs of recent history. If you
think that U.S. “smart bombs” now cause little carnage for civilians, please
see this website. Iraq
Body Count Iraqi War Victims
(This is not for the squeamish, but I believe every U.S. citizen should have a
look) See also this
provocative article on “smart bombs”
For more on this, see Regular
Everyday people site and The Memory Hole
1968:
· The Whole World Was Watching:
An Oral History of 1968
· We Remember—website about the
1968 Memphis garbage workers strike
· King's last speech in Memphis
(Mountaintop speech)
· See what's
become of the Lorraine Motel: The National Civil Rights Museum,
with an on-line tour.
· “We Are Living in A State of
Anarchy: Radical Assessments and Agenda of 1968”
Selected Documents
·
Leslie Gelb Analyzes the Roots of
U.S. Involvement in Vietnam (document)-this is the state departments own “explanation” for the
roots of U.S. involvement; note the defensive reaction to the accusations about
the real motivations for involvement
·
McNamara
on the way that the Cold War purges affected Vietnam
·
Senator Fulbright on
the Arrogance of Power 1966
·
President Johnson White House Tapes -“I don’t think it’s worth fighting for, and
I don’t think we can get out” –May 1964
·
Jim Vacarella Describes Avoiding
the Draft During the Vietnam War
·
The CIA and Vietnam:
Three Episodes, 1962-1968—
·
Winter
Soldier Investigation Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, 1971: This is
testimony of Vietnam Vets.
o 1st
Marine Division (shooting of unarmed civilians)
· Air
Calvary (Torture, killing “gooks”)
· Story on Phan Thi Kim Phuc,
the little girl who ran away from the napalm in Hearts and Minds
·
Testimony of Randy Floyd
(the Vietnam Vet featured in Hearts and Minds), before the Vietnam War Crimes Hearings
· How
Randy Floyd changed his mind—testimony from his child
·
Right-wing views on the Vietnam War-John
Birch Society coverage shows the type of ideas that have supported the idea that
the U.S. lost because it didn’t try to win the war
·
Selections
from the Vietnam Generation Journal
·
Martin
Luther King's declaration of independence from the war in Vietnam
·
A
Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority
·
Conspiracy
to Oppose the War in Vietnam by Benjamin Spock Excerpt from It Did
Happen Here by Schulz and Schulz (see
Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority as companion piece to this
·
Websites and links on Vietnam (many
have documents as well)
·
Spartacus Educational
Website on Vietnam—links to short biographies, and 100 other websites
· Vietnam War Internet Project
–documents, including those relating to Mai Lai
· Remembrance stories, poems,
songs, maps, and narratives from or about the Vietnam War era
· A Historian Reviews the recent
Vietnam War Movie: “We Were
Soldiers Once” But Which War?”
· Perspective
on the Bob Kerry Revelations about murdering children in Vietnam
· The New Hampshire Gazette’s list
of “Chickenhawks”—those
current pro-war politicians who avoided military service during Vietnam—
· CIA and Operation
Phoenix in Vietnam by former
Southeast Asia CIA operative Ralph McGhee
· International
War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam –1967
see therein the description
of Napalm effects
· Agent
Orange website
· Operation
Linebacker 1972—when bombing replaces U.S. troops—carnage; for those
who think the U.S. “fought with one arm tied”
· Pentagon Papers
materials from the National Security Archive
· The Pentagon
Papers—commentary. The Pentagon Papers were the leaked documents that
showed how the government was lying about the Vietnam War, and which made Nixon
go “ballistic” about the problems they might cause about questioning the war
· Conversation
with Daniel Ellsberg from Presidential Decisions and public dissent series
· Vietnam: Stories since
the war --oral histories of the
war’s impact, developed after a PBS P.O.V. show
· Right-wing views on the Vietnam
War-John Birch Society http://www.jbs.org/vietnam/index.htm