History270WarSociety

On the surface level The Winter Soldier  shows the atrocities committed during the Vietnam war. It gives a chilling account of what was actually happening versus what the public believed was happening. On a deeper level The Winter Soldier shows not only the attitudes of the war itself, but of society and the deeper underlying issues in society. The group gathered for the movie was actually a fairly diverse group of people, something that was not a social norm. One of the most telling things about the movie was when the black man was speaking very animatedly to the soldier outside of the panel about civil rights, going so far as to say that the cause of the war itself was racism. He was saying that the US was waging that war not for peacekeeping or resources or anything akin to that but because the US is inherently racist. He makes a point of saying that black people have no other choice when they get out of school but to join the army, saying that black men had one maybe two o...

Heyy guys, I don't know if anyone will see this, but if you wanna watch the movie on youtube, pretty pretty sure this is it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY0DqUd7lGM

From ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!   “The climax of the ballad was: ‘Now should a man, should a man have to kill in order to live like a human being in this country?’...’You are dead,’ each member of Chicano Draft Help would watch jaws drop as they pointed directly to a young man in the audience who looked to be of draft age” (Oropeza 106). Throughout the article, Lorena Oropeza highlights the anti-war stance many Chicanos/Chicanas took in regard to the Vietnam War. Oropeza frequently draws attention to the idea that most Chicanos/Chicanas identified more with the Vietnamese than Americans during the war, a telltale sign of the poor treatment they received in their home country. Oropeza also focuses on specific anti-war operations from within the Chicano community. For example, in order to spread their anti-war message, Lea Ybarra and Nina Genera founded the Chicano Draft Help organization in California and created theater performances to communicate the war’s atrocities. In one of t...

The debate of whether the army should an all volunteer or drafted is a debate the has sparked many years ago yet still has relevance to this day. It is an undeniable fact that the American army has shrunk due to the amount of people in the military. This begins our debate of whether it should be an all volunteer army or not. If the army were to continue to be an all volunteer the army would continue to dwindle in numbers. However, compared to a draft army usually everyone that is in the military wants to be there and has put themselves in that situation because they want to be there. With the all volunteer army, we can continue to use the benefits to this day and continue to fix all of the economical problems and fulfill all the broken promises to America's greatest heroes. There are certainly some flaws in the military but if service were to become mandatory a lot of things would have to change to accommodate this incredible change. Benefits would have to change because the gover...

In Chapter 5 of Skin in the Game: Poor Kids and Patriots , Major General Dennis Laich describes all of the downsides of the American military having an All Volunteer Force (AVF). Laich states that there is "deep concern over the issue of suicide not only in the active force but also among veterans." (pg. 98)  He states that there was a rise in service member suicides from 2011 to 2012 despite the efforts made by the Department of Defense to try and combat this issue and before 2008, the suicide rate for the active military was far below the general population. Does this have any connection to an AVF? Since the military draft ended in 1973 there weren't any spikes in active military suicide for almost forty years, so I think there is another underlying cause for this epidemic. I don't see a correlation in that aspect, but he does bring up a good point later on down the page. "One of the major problems to overcome is the stigma of asking for help in a macho militar...

"Most entered the military with little reflection, however, believing it a natural and unavoidable part of life."(84) This idea seemed to be the prevailing thought for the working and middle class men during the Vietnam War. Regardless if you were drafted or joined willingly there was the idea that you would be pulled into the war anyways. Men that thought about deferring their  notice then came to the sudden realization that it would be their friends and neighbors drafted in their place. The war became an unavoidable part of their lives. The other prevailing idea is of, "It was my turn."(58) The men that were being recruited for the draft had fathers and grandfathers that had served in the World Wars, and as the book says "Whether the father characterizes the experience as good or bad, if the son perceives the military as a major experience in his fathers life, he is more likely to consider it for himself."(59) Growing up with a major role model being in ...

A quote from Ken Lombardi - "I didn't want to get drafted so I enlisted in the army because they gave me the old scam that if you enlist you can pick your career and you may not go to Vietnam." In 1968 Ken was sent to Vietnam as an infantryman. (pg. 46) This statement embodies what a young man growing up in the Vietnam War era must have been thinking/feeling at the time. If you were a healthy young man past the age of 18, it was inevitable that you would be drafted into the war and sent to Vietnam. To try and beat this system most men enlisted into one of the branches of military to try and secure a job so that they wouldn't be chosen to go to war. The branches, such as the army took advantage of this thought process and even made recruiting slogans like "Make your choice now - join, or we'll make the choice for you" (pg. 46). This seems more like a threat than a recruiting slogan. It's ironic that many of the men who enlisted to try and escape the...

From Rise of the Warrior Cop : “They were then told to remain still as officers pointed guns at their heads. Eleven-year-old Alberto was doing just that-lying still under the gun of Officer David Hawn. But shortly after the raid began, Hawn’s gun went off. The boy died instantly. There were no drugs or guns  in the Sepulveda home….The city of Modesto and the federal government settled a lawsuit brought by the Sepulvedas for the death of their son for $3 million” (248). Throughout the assigned readings, it is clear that the ‘War on Drugs’ and the Post-9/11 fears enabled a culture, supported by the state and federal governments, of illegal and dangerous raids. One of the most disturbing instances of the abuse of power by police occurred in September 2000 in Modesto, California. After nineteen months of investigation, DEA and FBI agents, along with a local narcotics force, raided fourteen homes, including that of Moises Sepulveda. The officials raiding the homes were unaware of...

During the era of the Cold War, there was an undeniable increase in the American interest of self-defense. There was an increase of spending which resulted in a massive boost in our nation's defense budgets in order to combat the Soviet Union. We as a nation were spending billions of dollars  preparing to defend our nation's borders at any given moment. I found it very interesting in the Cold War Dixie Article, that scientists were some of the most important people alive during this time frame. Down south these people were viewed as almost celebrities due to their potential contribution in the United States military. It is incredible that the military was spending so much money on self defense in a time of pure peace to combat the rise of communism. The advancement of military spending really increased in 1957 due to the launch of the Sputnik satellite. The United States truly recognized the Soviet Union as a threat as they were able to send rockets into space. To attempt and c...

It was pretty clear from the readings that a big theme in this section is the "military-industrial complex". From what I understand from reading, this is a term used for the huge spending budget of the military in the U.S. My question is why do we spend so much on our military? I feel that is very important for our military to have a big spending budget, but not as big as it is now. According to one chart I looked up, which I believe is the same one from your powerpoint, the U.S. spends about three times as much on its military than the next closest country in 2014. Even if we lower the budget by a third of what it is now, we will still spend twice as much as any other country. We can then distribute that one third into other U.S. departments. And by the way, that one third would be around $200 billion. Another chart showed that the Military spends 54% of all of U.S. spending. What I'm trying to say is can't we still be the world's most powerful military with a sl...

From If He Hollers, Let Him Go : “But now I was scared in a different way. Not of the violence. Not of the mob. Not of physical hurt. But of America, of American justice. The jury and the judge. The people themselves. Of the inexorability of one conclusion-that I was guilty. In that one brief flash I could see myself trying to prove my innocence and nobody believing it. A white woman yelling, ‘Rape,’ and a Negro caught locked in the room. The whole structure of American thought was against me; American tradition had convicted me a hundred years before. And standing there in an American courtroom, through all the phoney formality of an American trial, having to take it, knowing that I was innocent and that I didn’t have a chance” (Himes 187). Despite FDR’s Executive Order No. 8802, the novel provides ample instances of institutionalized racism at the shipyard by Bob’s superiors and coworkers. This inevitably enables arguably the most significant quote from the novel in which Bob’s...

During this time period of 1945,  the war is at a climax for America. We are ahead in Europe and progressing in the Pacific Ocean against Japan. Robert 'Bob' Jones arrives in Los Angeles coming from Cleveland Ohio to take a new job in a shipyard to support the war efforts. Bob gains a promotion but is immediately criticized and is racially abused. These comments are by a white woman who will not do work for Bob. This is one of the main examples of racism used throughout the book. The book thoroughly uses a very racial term towards Bob throughout the entire book. This word is repeated and used so much to stress the point that African Americans were still abused while America was 'cleansing the world' of all the racial and extremist countries. This example made me reflect of how hypocritical America was during World War 2. On one hand we are saving millions of lives in Europe and defending the world yet our own country we are racist, lynching, and abusing our citizens. I...