Zach Frese Professor Linville English 20 April 24, 2014 Critique: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers In 1971, during the unpopular Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the press, influencing public opinion and ultimately ending the war. In 2009, during the unpopular Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith released a feature film telling Daniel Ellsberg’s dramatic tale. While no parallels are explicitly drawn in the film between the past and current presidential administrations, one can’t help but feel that the directors were attempting to awaken something in a contemporary audience. Narrated by “the most dangerous man” himself, this compelling documentary begins with a history of Daniel Ellsberg’s life in order to put his controversial actions in context. On his very first day working at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a U.S. navy captain in the Gulf of Tonkin reported that his ship was under attack from North Vietnam patrol boats. This new development led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and subsequently a substantial escalation of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. It quickly became clear, however, that no attack had occurred at all. Having been working on the escalation of the war, Ellsberg decided to transfer to the State Department at the U.S. embassy in Saigon in order to see U.S. progress firsthand. After two years leading a company in the field, Ellsberg had seen more than enough to know that the propaganda boasting U.S. success in Vietnam was simply false. Even McNamara himself agreed with Ellsberg that the war could not be won, just before making a statement to the press asserting his confidence in ou... ... middle of paper ... ...el-to-reel tape recorder. Nixon’s speech is highly censored, as only the most objectionable recordings are used in the film. It is a very effective technique, as it is shocking to hear Nixon casually suggest to Henry Kissinger that we simply drop a nuclear bomb on Hanoi. While Daniel Ellsberg’s story is certainly one worthy of a blockbuster documentary, it is not the only case to have made strides for our First Amendment rights. In a similarly unprecedented case, the Supreme Court deliberated on a public employee’s constitutional right to publicly criticize his employer. In Pickering v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision against the school board, who had fired Mr. Pickering for writing a critical letter that was “detrimental to the efficient operation and administration of the schools of the district” (Pickering v. Board of Education).
http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/freedoms/case.aspx?id=41>. . N. p.. Web. The Web. The Web. 14 Jan 2014.
The Vietnam War has become a focal point of the Sixties. Known as the first televised war, American citizens quickly became consumed with every aspect of the war. In a sense, they could not simply “turn off” the war. A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo is a firsthand account of this horrific war that tore our nation apart. Throughout this autobiography, there were several sections that grabbed my attention. I found Caputo’s use of stark comparisons and vivid imagery, particularly captivating in that, those scenes forced me to reflect on my own feelings about the war. These scenes also caused me to look at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a soldier, which is not a perspective I had previously considered. In particular, Caputo’s account of
In the Tinker v. Des Moines case, the students’ first amendment right was violated. They were not able to express their opinions freely. The first Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the right of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” (Classifying Arguments in the Cas...
Friedman, L. S. (2010). What Is the State of Civil Liberties in the United States?. Civil liberties (pp. 11-49). Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press.
The court stated the appellant’s statements were false concerned issues that were important to the public’s attention. The statements were neither shown nor could be presumed to interfere with the appellant’s performance of his teaching duties or the school’s operation (Oyez, n.d.). In the matter of false statements, the Supreme Court looked back at New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). The school board was unable to prove the statements were malicious in nature.
Justice Jackson's disagreement on the ruling of the Terminiello case is supported by many historical examples which demonstrate that freedom of speech is not an absolute right under the law. Although Terminiello had a right to exercise his right under the First Amendment, had the majority carefully considered this principle it should have rejected his claim. In this case, the majority's treatment of Terminiello's case skirted the real issue and did not benefit from true constitutional interpretation.
Vassar College. President Nixons Speech on Cambodia: April 30, 1970. <http://students.vassar.edu/~vietnam/doc15.html> Accessed 28 February 2001.
From the opening sentence of the essay, “We are free to be you, me, stupid, and dead”, Roger Rosenblatt hones in on a very potent and controversial topic. He notes the fundamental truth that although humans will regularly shield themselves with the omnipresent first amendment, seldom do we enjoy having the privilege we so readily abuse be used against us.
Released on July 31, 1992, the two-year film production was meticulously researched, yet laid out simply and forcefully the case against the US government story, and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature as a result. Made all the more timely by the recent war on terrorism (or errorism, as I like to call it), the “Panama Deception” shows how the U.S. killed between 3,000 to 4,000 people over the course of an invasion that the rest of the world was against (a theme duplicated in the War on Iraq and others prior to then Panama invasion).
He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win. This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
By 1968 the Vietnam War was a time by which Americans saw deep divide, disappointment, and tragedy. Their government had let them down, the figures they could trust had been killed, and their loved ones were scared by the effects of war. Rightfully so, the American people were upset and angry. The dynamic I have explored that made Vietnam such a critical piece in America’s history that influenced and entire party and a nation will only magnify in time not just in 1968 and not just for one primary election, but for all who shared a stake in this window.
In 1971 the New York Times and Washington Post had to make a decision to print illegally leaked, classified documents about the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The debate had begun by a man by the name of Daniel Ellsberg who had managed to copy over 7000 pages of highly classified documents. The documents contained and revealed the secret history of the government's true involvement in the Vietnam War. Furthermore, these extremely confidential documents exposed that the government had hidden knowledge that the Vietnam war had cost more lives than what the public was led to believe. All of the classified information would later come to be known as the "Pentagon Papers."
Schultz, David, and John R. Vile. The Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties in America. 710-712. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale Virtual Reference Library, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. .
David Rothkopf uses logical and ethical appeals to bring awareness to the American society about the effects of Washington’s past mistakes on The United States. Many years ago, the intended result of war was to do great things. The space program was created as well as the highway system and the internet. Needless to say, times have changed. Washington's executive branch hasn’t made the finest decisions over the past few years. Fear has been put into the minds of America’s political leaders, and fear can lead to bad decision making. An example of bad decision making is the Iraq War and Afghanistan War. The attacks of 9/11 introduced fear to the American government. Resulting from this fear was the thought that everybody had become a
Ashley Dawson argues that Ridley Scott's film Black Hawk Down may be seen with the benefit of historical hindsight as a portrait of the fear of imperial overreach and failure as written through the psyche of elite U.S. soldiers (cite). Soon after September 11th, 2001, Black Hawk Down was released for a group of military and civilian leaders that included, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Thomas E. White, and Oliver North (cite). Ridley Scott, the director of Black Hawk Down held this early release of the film to the group to clarify the idea that the military had “messed up in Somali” (cite). According to (cite) Ridley Scott says, “The U.S. intervention in Somali was heroic in a very unstoppable part of the world”. The presence of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz at the prescreening of the film suggests that policymakers were sensitive to the role that representations of the United States Military interventions along the