Professors Robert E. Looney and Executive Director of the Center for International Studies at MIT John Tirman discuss the economy of Iraq, including its past state, its current condition, and the possibilities for its future development. They examine the U.S.'s plans for economic reform in Iraq and their effects so far, and project that past and current conditions will lead to instability and further conflict in the country.
Professor Alan Wolfe discusses the role of religion in U.S. politics, particularly in the present day. He argues that the "current Christian revival" in the U.S. is not having a negative, "fundamentalist" effect on U.S. government as a whole.
Professors Ngo Ving Long and Noam Chomsky detail the U.S.'s oppression and killing of civilians in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, arguing that the U.S. public today has not learned from the war and does not remember it clearly and objectively.
How significant is the Tet Offensive in the overall narrative of the Vietnam War?
Textbooks present the Tet Offensive as the single most important turning point in the Vietnam War. They also argue that the war after Tet was characterized by little more than a wind down of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
There is a plethora of previously ignored sources available that illustrate the U.S. turn towards counterinsurgency in the years 1968-1973. These sources suggest that the U.S. military developed this strategy in an attempt to win in Vietnam even after Tet, and this philosophy became the basic structure of much U.S. military thought by the late 20th century.
Historians argue that the Tet Offensive was a significant watershed event in the Vietnam War. However, many historians also point out that the years of U.S. involvement after Tet, 1968-1973, were significant and that the U.S. developed ideas of counterinsurgency during this time period.
The Tet Offensive has become enshrined as THE turning point of the American war in Vietnam. The shock of “Tet” did cause many Americans to rethink the U.S. role in Southeast Asia. The textbooks also argue that the war after Tet was characterized by little more than a wind down of American involvement. In doing so, however, all of the texts ignore the policies of pacification and counterinsurgency that characterized U.S. military thinking from 1968 to 1973. Such omissions distort and oversimplify the story of Vietnam in such a way as to make it difficult for students to understand the relationship of the Vietnam experience to the history of American involvement in the rest of the world, both before the Vietnam War and in events since.
Edward Turzanski of the Foreign Policy Research Institute attempts to sum up what students should be taught about the War on Terrorism, in order to prepare students to critically analyze world events and plan for and anticipate future events. He suggests that the languages of cultures beyond the Spanish-speaking and Western European world and world geography need to be more widely taught.
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Lowell E. Jacoby, executive vice president for Strategic Intelligence Opportunities at CACI International, discusses what he believes U.S. citizens need to think about and what they need to prepare for in proceeding forward from 9/11.
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Patrick Clawson, Deputy Director of Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, looks at Iran's development of nuclear weapons.
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Harvey Sicherman, President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, looks at the current war in Iraq; and asks what relationship it has with the War on Terrorism. He outlines previous presidential stands on terrorism, which largely ideologically opposed terrorism, but did not take direct, open action against it—contrasting them with Bush's active declaration of war against terrorism. Sicherman argues that the war in Iraq functions as an extension of the war on terrorism and of previous U.S. policy in the Middle East.
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David Eisenhower of the Foreign Policy Research Institute considers the current necessity of approaching terrorism and the current war as teaching subjects, and looks at how national crises—such as 9/11—pose certain rhetorical and leadership demands on presidents, and how President Bush reacted to these demands.
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Paul Dickler of Neshaminy High School reviews several points he considers important in teaching on 9/11 and terrorism, as well as in teaching history more generally.
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