The Cold War

Okay, Kami called me and threatened to boycott the reading blog (gasp) if I didn't write about the Cold War book I had thrust upon her. Ahem. Unfortunately, there is some bad news in that area. My MIL came over the other morning unexpectedly to clean my house (my morning sickness has been REALLY bad and she felt sorry for me--nice lady), and so she was here while I was at the swimming pool for my kids' swimming lessons. And, long story short, she threw away my notes about the book. At least, that is what I am assuming because I went to get them today and they were gone. And the shelf was neatened and straightened. Sigh. I had lots of things written down, but all on scraps of paper that probably looked quite a bit like garbage. Can't really blame her.

So--all I can remember that I wanted to write about was that I really liked the author. Kami found him a bit dry, but considering he's a historian, I thought he was fairly entertaining. Also, I really appreciated that he gave such well-rounded coverage of each president.

For example, in the history textbooks I have seen, Eisenhower was always portrayed as a non-president. Meaning, he did a lot of golfing and that was about it. I always wondered how a man could go from being one of the best military brains in the world to being a useless dud, but Brands cleared up that misapprehension right away. In fact, after thinking about what could have happened, I was very grateful that Eisenhower was the president when he was.

Same with Nixon. I had heard all the bad things, but hadn't realized that he was the president that really made serious progress in easing up tensions between the US and China and the US and Russia. I had always heard that Reagan was the big man when it came to ending the Cold War, but lo and behold, if any credit should go to an American (which is a little dubious), than Nixon should get it. Reagan got lucky. Gorbachev actually forced Reagan into ending the Cold War, despite Reagan's trying everything possible to keep it going so that his economy (based on the Star Wars program) wouldn't falter. Again, this I did not know.

Also, Kami and Kelly both talked about how many times presidents and their administrations falsified things and misled the public, and did all sorts of other nefarious things in order to shore up the economy, or help win an election. I have no illusions about whether or not that will ever end. However, Kami and I talked at length about the moral superiority that the US gave up in order to have fun with their little covert operations. At first, I was undecided. America does need to protect its interests from unscrupulous peoples and governments, and often being unscrupulous is the first line of attack against the unscrupulous. I certainly did not want to say always take the high road even at the expense of America's security.

But now, I have stopped wavering. The more I think about the founding fathers and the vision of this country, the more I believe that America does not have to be unscrupulous and immoral in order to preserve our liberties. Torture is wrong. Planning to assassinate someone is wrong. Forcing our military personnel to do things that are morally questionable is wrong.

While I disagree strongly with most of my current students who spend many words on whining about how terrible the USA is, and how they think Bush is completely to blame, and how we are all doomed to starvation and it is because of the Iraq War and other such nonsense, I have a firm belief, still, in the incredible nature of this country and I don't want it tainted by morally questionable behavior on our part.

We might sometimes err in not becoming involved somewhere else in the world soon enough, or we might err by becoming involved too soon, or we might err in arresting someone who is actually innocent, and we might make thousands of mistakes. But, that is okay. What is not okay is when we willingly and knowingly do things that are blatantly wrong. To err is human, to do it on purpose is stupid.

I had other thoughts and some really great quotes, but I won't be posting them here. Obviously.

Also, I finished Milkweed on Monday and I keep waiting for someone to open the discussion about it. Since that isn't happening, I will open the discussion about it in another post. Just know that until my morning sickness subsides and my book is written and my classes final projects are graded--I won't be writing nice essays like Kammers and Kelly. But, I still want to and intend to eventually.

And just to make it official, on Monday, we are officially starting to talk about the Life of Bees, so if you want to discuss Milkweed, you have the rest of this week.