Lessons Learned

Throughout this semester, there have been multiple lessons learned by reading and interpreting American history. However, after much examination there have been two trends that I believe to be the most important. One being how the advancement of technology, more specifically, the creation and use of the atomic bomb created a national security state and also increased the power in the executive branch. The other being how the media, since The Vietnam War, has influenced public opinion and out thoughts about war. 

Upon reading Gary Wills' book Bomb Power, I have come to the understanding that the Executive powers, more specifically, the powers of the president have been dramatically changed due to the invention of the atomic bomb. Gary Wills refers to this shift in presidential power as: Bomb Power. Since World War II and the creation of a national security state, the president has been granted a number of powers that were once unavailable or unnecessary. One of these powers is " the sole and unconstrained authority over all possible uses of the Bomb." With such a power, the president is essentially holding the fate of America in his hands

The reason for the president’s immense amount of power is to protect the American people. So with all of his presidential power, one would expect America and its citizens to be protected. However, after reading: The Deafness Before the Storm, an article written by Kurt Eichwald, I began to second guess the safety of the nation under the protection of the president. The article talks about the neglect that the Bush administration showed in regards to classified reviews and warnings sent by the CIA about possible Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda threats, which began being sent to the administration as early as May of 2001.After the attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration tried to defend their lack of attention to these matters, but in my opinion, no there are no excuses for their actions. What’s the point of the president having all of this power and control if he's not going to use it for the protection and advancement of the American people? He was given these powers for a reason; if he is not using them correctly then they should be taken away. Voltaire stated: "with great power comes great responsibility," and I believe that if the president cannot take responsibility for his neglect and the consequences that occurred because of it, then the presidential powers should not be so "great."

              Vietnam is considered to be the first heavily televised war. The media brought the war into American homes. Vietnam was the first war covered in depth on the nightly news. The film coverage showed the realities of warfare: wounded civilians, children who had lost their parents, villages destroyed, American GIs with various gruesome wounds from land mines and artillery fire. Print news, especially magazines, always sell well with sensational photos and Vietnam provided them with plenty. Babies burned by napalm, poor rural villages burned by our soldiers. 

    

         Many things happen in war that are too terrible and the sight of such things, in glossy vivid color, cannot be forgotten .People would read it and watch it, sitting in their homes, eating dinner, seeing the piles of dead Vietcong and listening to the daily body count. They saw the fresh, young faces of American soldiers and, eventually, came to realize that these young boys were being thrown into a meat grinder. With all our money and technology, we were losing.

Protest in America against Vietnam War

        

       The way the war was portrayed to the citizens in America began to negatively affect the people’s hope in the government and the war. This feeling was amplified when the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the public, which revealed the true statistics of the war and the rates of American causalities, which were far higher than previously reported.The media and what chosen to be shown influenced American citizens and their thoughts about the war.

"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam."1

1 http://voices.yahoo.com/how-media-coverage-vietnam-war-changed-america-667863.html?cat=37

Gary Wills, Bomb Power