My American Hero

When I think of a hero in U.S. history, I think of someone who made a difference in this country, took a stand for his beliefs, and made a decision for the greater good even when faced with great opposition and obstacles; I think of Abraham Lincoln. According to James Loewen, in Lies My Teacher Told Me, very few students pick presidents or other common figures that textbooks glorify because they think they are boring. While textbooks may portray Lincoln as just another two-dimensional figure, I know that there is much more to him and there are many great contributions to our nation made by him. I believe that Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents of our nation. He brought the nation through the roughest and bloodiest battle in our history, managed to preserve the Union, abolished slavery at long last, and promoted the passage of the 13th amendment. While Lincoln did wrestle with racism, he ultimately chose the higher road and worked to improve race relations. Not many people know that he desegregated the White House and, for the first time, exchanged diplomats with Haiti and Liberia. He worked hard to make decisions for the nation that he knew were right. Not only did he help save the Union, but he also saved an entire race of people from centuries of suffering in this country. 

"The Great Explorer" or "The Great Oppressor"?

In school, I was always taught about the greatness of Christopher Columbus, “the great explorer” who discovered America. But this not true! Textbooks tell a different version of the truth in order to humanize him and make him look like a hero. Similarly, the U.S. government portrays Columbus in only a positive light, sharing the basic story about him that we’ve all heard before. However, in Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen presents a different account of Columbus. He provides all the details, including all the previous explorers before Columbus and even tells of Columbus’s flaws and brutal treatment of natives. I believe Loewan’s account to be closer to the truth because he did a lot of research and his purpose is to inform and relate what really happened in history. The government’s purpose, on the other hand, is to give an account of Columbus in light of the fact that we have a national holiday named after him. Obviously, if our country has a national holiday named after him, they are going to want to show why and they are going to portray him in an optimistic and biased way. I don’t think that Columbus actually deserves to have a holiday named after him at all. Out of the few people who are recognized by name in a national holiday, we shouldn’t be celebrating a man who was simply luckily enough to travel to the right place at the right time and got a big reaction and who oppressed native people.

Proportional? Please!

Robert S. McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, argued in The Fog of War that WWII firebombing of Japanese cities and dropping atomic bombs were "not proportional to the objectives [the U.S. was] trying to achieve". This was a tremendous amount of damage and killing in terms of what the US was actually trying to achieve. The US went so far as for the U.S. Air Force General LeMay to argue that they would have been convicted as war criminals if they lost the war. I believe that proportionality should definitely be a guideline in war. The massive casualties and destruction that are a part of war are bad enough; there shouldn't be more death and destruction than there has to be. Yes, sometimes countries have to go to war to solve problems and sometimes they need to take extreme measures to win, but they need not go farther than they have to, that is, they should keep their actions proportional to their mission. This lesson was clearly not followed in WWII. Like McNamara said, the US killed 50-90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was obviously way more extensive damage than was really necessary and so it was not proportional. McNamara and LeMay would have been prosecuted as war criminals if we had lost, but should they have been, even though we won? It doesn’t make sense to prosecute the winning generals, “heroes” of the war, but what they did was bad enough that they deserved it.

You’d think we would have learned our lesson from that, but we are still not being proportional today with the war in Iraq. I believe we have overextended our stay; a few years after the Hussein regime was toppled we are still there interfering. We say we are trying to reconstruct Iraq and stop insurgencies and such, yet we are bombing Baghdad. I believe the bombing and who-knows-what-else our soldiers are doing in Iraq is not proportional to our objective of helping and reconstructing Iraq. 

A Truly Amazing Man

Interview with Ishmael Beah

*read some of the kids comments on this video-wow

After watching an interview with Ishmael Beah from CBS's The Hour, I cannot help but get the impression of what an amazing and inspiring guy he is. He went through so many terrible and painful experiences and not only recovered, but was able to share his experiences with the world and use his suffering to promote the awareness and resolution of the issue of child soldiers. From watching the clip, I got a sense of how real he was, how he had a glow and a great smile and so much life in him, even after all that he'd been through! His on-air personality was very natural and composed. He seemed very sincere and like he has reached a point in which he is actually comfortable talking about his experiences. A lot of things that he said in the interview reminded me of specific passages from his book. He talked about mothers and fathers carrying their dead sons and daughters while running away from the war, which reminded me of the part when Ishmael was heading back toward his home town and saw the mom with a dead baby on her back dripping blood and a father carrying his dead son. He also talked about watching Rambo movies and how they 'fed' them drugs to keep them in fighting mode, which reminded me of the scenes when he is a soldier. Talking about how he didn't want to leave the army and how he was resistant to the new home he was put in also reminded me of the memoir. Both his interview and his memoir demonstrate the strength of the human nature to fight for life through immense struggles and catastrophes and also the human resiliency that allowed him to be able to get through those struggles and now lead a relatively normal life. I already recommended this book to my mom, but I would definitely also recommend A Long Way Gone to my other friends and family because it is a very well written and truly touching story and it gave me a new perspective about the problem of child soldiers in Africa.

 

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