I think that the most important thing we have learned all year, is Oscar Schindler and the Holocaust. I learned so much about life, as well as Histroy from studying this topic. The Nazi's must have been partly deranged. Even unders Hitlers, almost devilish brainwash, there shoudl of been some justice. What he did to those people, changed the world forever. Nobody in the history of the world will forget Hitler and the Holocaust. But what I learned most about the topic, was that people all deserve a fair chance, and someone needs to be there to try to give it to them. It really makes you think abotu how many little things you can do to help someone else for no reason. Just because you are there with this person at the same time, you have the ability to now change their lives. Whethere they understand this or not, you gave them a chancwe to have their lives change because of what your did. this is what Oscar Schiindler didfor many people during the war. He saved lives, just by realizing that no matter what race yu are a person is still a person. They shoudsl be treated with the same rights as other people. Thsi relates much to ur current culture. People in America are beginging to become so racist against the Hispanic community, because of the spotlight our media puts upon them. These hispanic people dont come to America (legally, or illegally) with the mindset of stealing an American job. They come for the sole purpose, of their country sucks, and our is a liitle slice of paradice for them. They woudl likje to make their live a slice of paradise forever, so they decide to go for it. I dont believe trying to better your life deserves to be punished. When the British came to america from Great Britain, they saw people and they didnt go pay the indians and take a test to live there. They used brut force anf forced their way into the land. They did this to better their lives in the loing run. Thsi made sense to the Americans and recently we have lost that sense.

Presidental "Boo- Boo's"

In June of 1972 in Washington, D.C. an event occurred, a burglary, which ended up holding worldwide importance. It was on this date that five people broke into the Democratic National Headquarters to bug their telephones. These men were members of the ‘Plumbers’, a group of anti-Castro Cuban refugees, former FBI agents and former CIA agents among others. The group was strongly Republican. The place they broke into was The Watergate Hotel.
Many people remember the name Watergate as a blanket term used to describe the fall of President Richard Nixon. But do you remember the specifics of those events? It has taken years filled with books and interviews to begin to understand what the scandal and its complications truly were. This article will attempt to be a ‘primer’, a starting point from which you may go and research further this event.
In the early 1970’s America was still reeling from its turbulent time in the 1960’s. One of the issues that was greatly contested in the 60’s, Vietnam, had carried it’s self over into the new decade. By this time though, the opinions and thoughts of many concerning the war had started to change. Daniel Ellsberg was one of these individuals. A former defense department analyst, his thoughts on the war had turned and in 1971 he turned over a secret Pentagon report concerning the history of the war to the New York Times. The Times immediately began publishing these ‘Pentagon Papers’ which greatly infuriated many of those in charge of the country, including President Nixon. When Nixon became unable to stop the publication of the papers through legal channels, he turned in another direction for help.
The Plumbers were a ‘secret’ unit created and maintained by the White House with the expressed purpose of ‘fixing leaks’ in the administration. The Plumbers were immediately charged with going after Ellsberg. The thought was that if the papers publication could not be stopped, the next step would be to discredit the man who provided those papers. This included breaking into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to dig up what they could.
They worked tirelessly at their goal and were soon rewarded with another job in the following election year: derailing the Democratic ticket. On June 17, 1972 a group of men broke into the DNC Headquarters to find what they could and to bug the offices. A sharp-eyed security officer saw the break in, called the police and the burglars were quickly taken into custody. Over the next few days and months, amazing insights into these men came out. One of the burglars used to be a GOP security aide, another was found to have a 25,000$ check that was supposed to have gone to Nixon’s re-election campaign. In fact, it turned out that all of the burglars were on the payroll of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (C.R.E.E.P.).
As this unfolded, Nixon went on to win the presidential election in one of the biggest landslides in history. It would be Nixon’s last big win. Following his re-election the repercussions from the Watergate break-in grew larger. Several of the burglars went to jail. As the connection between these burglars and the Republican White House grew stronger, several White House staffers were forced to resign and White House Chief Counsel John Dean resigned.
Rumors swirled about the break-in, the similar events that many believed had also occurred and Nixon’s involvement in it all. In May of 1973 the Senate opened up hearings on the Watergate break-in and under intense pressure, Nixon had Archibald Cox appointed as Special Prosecutor to the case.
The Senate investigation went forward and immediately became damaging to the President in June as John Dean became the first (former) White House staff member to admit that he had discussions with the President concerning Watergate and how to cover it up. In July things got worse as it was revealed in the Senate hearings that Nixon had a sophisticated taping system set up in the Oval Office with which he had taped all of his conversations. The Senate Committee and Special Prosecutor Cox immediately requested that Nixon hand those tapes over. Citing everything from National Security to Executive Privilege, Nixon refuses to hand over the tapes.
The pressure on Nixon continued to grow strong, so much so that on October 20, 1973 he was moved to commit the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’. Unable to shake Cox’s pressure, Nixon contacted Attorney General Elliott Richardson and ordered him to fire Cox. Richardson refused and was himself immediately fired. Nixon then turned to the Assistant Attorney General to fire Cox. He too refused and was fired. Nixon finally found someone who would fire Cox but the resulting backlash forced Nixon to have a new Special Prosecutor appointed. Leon Jaworski was given that task and immediately began pressing Nixon to hand over the tapes.
Throughout the rest of 1973 the country stood by breathlessly as Nixon, the Senate and the prosecutors went round and round. First Nixon said that one of the key tapes which the prosecutors wanted had an 18 ½ minute gap on it, then Nixon tried to send written (and heavily edited) transcripts of many of the taped conversations in lieu of the actual tapes. The pressure continued to be placed on Nixon though to hand over the tapes.
In July of 1974 Jaworski had no other choice but to name Nixon as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the obstruction of justice over the Watergate matter. Nixon continued to claim Executive Privilege in his refusals to hand the materials over. The matter was taken up by the Supreme Court who unanimously rejected Nixon’s argument and ordered that he turn the tapes over. When he refused, the House of Representatives, three days later, voted to impeach the President.
Nixon now realized that he was into a corner from which there was only one way out and so it was that on August 8, 1974 Richard M. Nixon became the first United States President to resign. Gerald Ford, who had become Vice President upon the resignation of Nixon’s Original VP Spiro T. Agnew, assumed the highest office of the land. Days after becoming President, Ford pardoned Nixon completely. Nixon was the only ‘Watergate conspirator’ who spent no time in jail.
The lessons learned by these events are enormous. The story of Watergate is a complex and deep one full of scandal and back room deals, public politics and personal motivations. It is deeply an American event that touched the world. It gave the people of the world, the idea that American Presidents are actually human. I believe this is an idea thast everyone on the planet needs to have. Everyone needs to understand that NO MATTER who you are you can never be above the law.

1950 to 2007

The 1950s in the United States of America marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years, and a return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the baby boom from returning GIs who went to college under the G.I. Bill and settled in suburban America. Most of the internal conflicts that had developed in earlier decades like women's rights, civil rights, and imperialism were relatively suppressed or neglected during this time as a world returning from the brink hoped to see a more consistent way of life as opposed to the radicalism of the 1930s and 1940s. The effect of suppressing social problems in the 1950s would have a significant impact on the rest of the twentieth century.

The year 2007 is going to be a big year. we are curently in a war with terror, much like in the 1950 with the war on comunism. the war has lead us into Iraq. this is one of the most contriversal subjects in our modern times. The president is Gorge W. Bush. The kid culture is surounded by different kinds of music and movies. almost every person in the U.S. has a myspace. there are 176,152,369 members on myspace. I woudl go out on a limb to guess that more people have a myspace than have a car. Our culture is growing so fast and we are haivng no ideas of slowing down. I believe this is how they felt in the 1950s as well.

My War Experience

What I have learned by studying this war... Wow I have learned as much or more than I have studying anything before. I have learned mistakes people have made, and not to make them again. I have learned that hippies are wierd. I also learned that fighting a war for a foggy purpose, always leads you down the wrong road. It really helps learning, when you have someone that can remenber first hand experiences of the time. I really appreciate you Mr. Lockwood, for taking the time to teach us, and using your experiences that you can recall, for the acknowledgement of your students.

VIETNAM

The Vietnam War was a military conflict in present day Vietnam occurring from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The conflict was a successful effort by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, to impose on Vietnam a communist system, defeating the South Vietnamese Republic of Vietnam. To a degree, the Vietnam War was a "proxy war" between the U.S. and its Western allies on the side of the RVN, with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China supporting the DRV on the other. As a result of this it is often considered part of the Cold War.
The chief cause of the war was the failure of Vietnamese nationalists, in the form of the Viet Minh, to gain control of southern Vietnam both during and after their struggle for independence from France in the First Indochina War of 1946–54.
The U.S., in particular, deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam between 1954 and 1973. U.S. military advisors first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisers assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. President Kennedy increased America's troop number from 500 to 16,000. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and remained in South Vietnam until August 1972. Almost all of the remaining U.S. military personnel departed after the Paris Peace Agreement of 1973, leaving behind only an embassy guard. The last American troops left the country on April 30, 1975.
At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. U.S. aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both logistical networks and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to enemy combatants.
The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war claimed between 2 and 5.7 million Southeast Asian lives, a large number of whom were civilians.

VIETNAM

The last official American military action in Southeast Asia occurred on 15 May 1975, when 18 Marines were killed during a rescue operation known as the Mayagüez incident.
The dire predictions of a generation did not come to fruition. The domino theory, so widely trumpeted, prove an illusion. South East Asia did not collaspe into the arms of communism. The idea of a monolithic communist block also prove misguided, as Nixon pried China away from it's traditional ally, the Soviet Union. Vietnam, without the presence of the United States, showed itself to be of little economic or stategic value. The American position in Asia remained unaltered by the loss. Far from undermining it's credibility abroad, in 1972 the United States signed a strategic arms limitation treaty with it's arch foe the Soviet Union. At home, a generation of Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of military intervension without clear motives or objectives. The war demontrated that no power, not even a superpower, has unlimited strength and resources. But perhaps most significantly, the Vietnam War illustrated that political will, as much as material might, is a decisive factor in determining the outcome of any conflict.

Vietnam

The U.S. deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam between 1954 and 1973. U.S. military advisors first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisors assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. President Kennedy increased America's troop number from 500 to 16,000. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965. The last American troops left the country on April 30, 1975. At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. U.S. aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both logistical networks and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to enemy combatants. The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war claimed between 2 and 5.7 million Southeast Asian lives, a large number of whom were civilians.