Thursday, February 21, 2008
My “frame” of the Vietnam War is fairly insightful in my opinion. I have amassed a large amount of knowledge about the war by speaking with veterans, literature, and what we covered on the war in my military history class. The Vietnam War was a very difficult war for the United States. Firstly it was never technically a war. The U.S. government claimed that it was always a police action but it was essentially a war and an unpopular one. The general public did not understand why we were in Vietnam and their uncertainties were only perpetuated further by the media who would show graphic depictions of Vietnam casualties on a nightly basis. Furthermore the war was like nothing that the U.S. had ever seen before. This type of war was called an insurgency war where there was no clear front. Frankly the U.S. was not prepared for this type of fighting. I have also learned that there were two types of Vietnam for the soldiers. While not in combat soldiers had good food, entertainment from the U.S.O. and all the pot they could smoke. Unfortunately while in battle soldiers experienced some of the most bloody fighting conditions we had ever seen.
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The extent of my knowledge about the war has been unfortunately been restricted to family members, teachers, and friends, but that is really valuable information that you were able to attain by speaking with the war vets, and taking a military history class. I agree with you that the general public did not understand why we were in Vietnam and I think that is due to the media and their camouflaging of the war.
The thing about history is...it's all biased! Do you believe something just because it was written? I am not attacking just asking you to think about it from another view point. You could never talk to every person involved in that war from the bottom up. There is no way to recieve a true history of the situation. I think about war from an emotional perspective and the emotional impacts it has on not only the soldiers, but their famalies, the politicans, the children and everyone as a whole. I think it's great you have been able to talk to people involved in the war and are knowledgable about the war itself but my whole point is everything is a distortion.
When we read these books provided by Dr. Berger we can see that war is not all it is cracked up to be. It's not total action all the time, and it actually takes us into the lives of these characters so we can get a better view instead of our abstract outsider view that I believe most of us have. But what do you think made this war so unpopular?
While I agree with Leah that we can't know how every person experiences an event or phenomena, I caution against falling into the very attractive (and very postmodern) trap of relativism.
Things can, in fact, be known and, over time, with due diligence and by exposing yourself to multiple (and conflicting ~ this is very important, but it's a key failing of our contemporary society, that we often seek out only opinions that we already agree with, which means we're never actually growing or learning or evolving a perspective on an issue, stretching our frame, so to speak)perspectives...over time, we gain *understanding* (a deeper and more meaningful form of knowing, that is gained by analysis and synthesis of complex ideas).
So, in sum, I agree that we can't know and therefore can't understand the subjective experiences of every person in every or even *any* event, but I absolutely believe that we *can* make meaning out of history, as out of contemporary events, by educating ourselves: looking into the facts as best we can; comparing what we find out; and most importantly, seeking out multiple and contradictory perspectives on a subject in order to arrive at our own educated opinions about complex realities...
What other purpose is there in trying to educate ourselves, right? without understanding, we can't work for a better world, for ourselves or more generally, and what could possibly be the purpose of a human life if not to make the lives of others, and the condition of the world, better through that understanding?
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