Please be seated quietly, phones put away,
copy down today's agenda. If everyone in the room is doing this when the bell rings, you choose music the last 5 minutes.
--- Mr. LaGreide: year-end essay ---
____________________________________________
Weds. May 7th, today's agenda:
The Big Picture: should America's founding ideals apply to our foreign policy?
What was Truman's decision?
these notes will be posted to the blog for your review
http://paiushistory.blogspot.com/
Homework: 1. review blog, bring one question to class tomorrow, 2. ask your parents/g-parents if or how your family was affected by the Vietnam War.
The question for the whole year for this course in American History is:
How well have Americans lived up to the nation’s founding ideals of equality, rights, liberty, opportunity, and democracy?
As we study the Cold War and Vietnam, ask this:
Do our founding ideals apply to how Americans use military power in other countries? Should they?
At the end of the period we'll discuss this in terms of Truman's decision about what to do in Vietnam.
How do you know?
How do you make decisions?
What was the decision Truman had to make?
What was the evidence he saw?
How did he weigh it?
What did he decide?
What does it matter?
Truman had to see the Big Picture in Vietnam.
What do you see?
So who's Truman...?
When FDR died, as per the Constitution, he became POTUS. He was US President from 1945 - 1953.
When FDR died he told the press:
"I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."
Harry had a sign on his Oval Office desk that read:
"The buck stops here." What did he mean?
In 1946 - 1950,
Harry had a decision to make in Vietnam:
1) help the French regain Vietnam (their colony), and contain the spread of communism, or
2) recognize Vietnamese claims of independence.
What were the factors in his decision?
Text: read in class
What will
Truman do
in Vietnam?
(1946 - 1953)
Kennan's
telegram?
Stalin?
Ho Chi Minh's request for help
to get independent
Truman is brand-new POTUS?
spies,
Red Scare
in US?
Russian
A-bomb
1950?
Vietnam
a French colony, so?
Truman: "the buck stops here"
Korean War?
Korea...? What does Korea have to do
with Vietnam...?
Korean War
1950 - 1953
33,686 US dead. 1,000,000 Korean dead, north and south. Containment.
...and this. Truman and his advisers think about this a lot.
Who is the bear?
What's the point about the bear?
Monday we studied the 1946 telegram that Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh sent President Truman, asking for help getting Vietnamese independence from France.
1) First answer the little questions with the arrows with one or two words.
2)Bigger question: should Truman help Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese communists throw the French out of Vietnam? Or should Truman help France, an American ally, retake their former colony Vietnam?
3) Biggest Question: Do our founding ideals apply to how Americans use military power in other countries? Should they? If you were Truman what would you do? Why?