African American Vietnam War - Assignment Example

3rd Essay: Interview Exercise one I can interview Roy Butler, because he is a Gulf War Veteran. 2. I can interviewMontraville Lybrand because he is a decorated second world war veteran 3. I can interview Allen Nelson because he is an African American Vietnam War veteran. 4. I can interview Darrell Anderson, because he is an Iraq War veteran. 5. I can interview John G. Centanni, because he is the Newark fire chief. Exercise two A new report by Moody’s Investors Service pinpoints to tough financial crisis in public universities evidenced by escalating budgetary stresses despite above-average increases in enrolment and growth in tuition revenue per student. The report further points to mounting debts whose growth rate has exceeded concurrent growth rates in revenue, total financial resources and enrolment, and where the debt per student exceeded financial resources per student. The report further predict continued financial difficulties for the public colleges but expects the public universities to raise tuition and fees so as to bridge the revenue gaps occasioned by cuts in state support, weakened endowments and higher expenses generated by growing enrolment. However, the reports indicate that the public colleges have remained liquid and able to meet their current liability on short notice, but the private universities had a stronger liquidity than similarly rated public universities. Exercise 3. 1. Mary said to Tom, “put the book down and pay for my coffee.” 2. Tom replied, “Absolutely no. Pay for yourself.” 3. “The computer has revolutionized education,” stated John Thompson. 4. “I spilled coffee all over my keyboard,” Taylor cried. 5. “The car is a 2012 Toyota,” Mary said to Tom, “will you pay for it?” “If my family had a lot of money, I would never have gone into the Marine Corps,” said Allen Nelson, a 65 year old, African American Vietnam War veteran clutching his scarred chin, perhaps scars originating from the years he served in the battle front. He had casually walked into the room, the guestroom room of his four bed roomed Bungalow, punctually, dressed in a jungle green trouser, and a white shirt, perhaps to signify what he calls peace for war. Before commencing with the interview, he takes us through his photo album during his military days. Mr. Allen, who is tall and muscular, dropped out of high school to join the military at the age of 18 years. After joining military, he deployed to Okinawa for two week training and thereafter deployed to Vietnam at the height of the war. He admits having killed many Vietnamese soldiers and watching others die, in the 13 months that he spent in the Vietnamese jungle. He is now a vocal proponent of peace in the world and a prominent critic of waging war. His advice to the students is to “understand the importance of creating a world of peace and nonviolence”. He laments the military’s use of an aggressive approach, to recruit young men and women. “Nowadays we have allowed the military to go into our junior high schools and or high schools, and they have programs, ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) programs for the young high school and junior high school students,” He says, “When I was a child that did not happen; you had to go to the recruiter’s office”. He categorically stated that such aggressive recruiting do not offer the young high school kids a chance to look at what their options in life are. “Military presence in our schools has convinced many children that the military is a good thing”. He asserts that military training changes the mind of the young recruits. Marine Corps, he says, trained to kill. The first thing that the trainers do is to remove “your civilian life from you” by getting rid of one’s civilian way of thinking. “In the military there’s no thinking. You are trained to follow orders. You do not ask any questions.” he says. He opines that it is easier to do this to young high school kids who have no idea of what they want to do with their lives. He says that the trainers brainwashes the recruits into believing that no thinking is a good. Consequently, that is how they manage to turn young thinkers into killers. Those who fail to adapt to the new rules and display thinking tendencies are ejected from the military since the military “sees thinkers as being very dangerous”. He chides military trainers for failing to give adequate training to the new recruits prior to deploying them to the war fronts. He states that prior to deployment in Vietnam he did not know anything about Vietnam; its history, culture, location on the map, languages, physical characteristics of Vietnamese, or even how to spell the name Vietnam. He emphatically stated that if he knew the history of Vietnam, their struggle to have their country for over 200 years, he could never have gone there. He asserts that it is the events that occur in the battlefront that awaken soldiers who starts asking themselves questions about their participation in war . He points to losing friends and colleagues in the battlefront as a very sad affair that makes the soldier question what they are doing in the battle front. He remembered vividly watching his colleagues die in the battlefront, some peacefully, but others in denial, “they cannot believe it has happened,” He says. He adds “they do a lot of yelling and screaming and grabbing onto your clothes, trying to pull you into death with them. Those are the most difficult to be with, to watch them, and to be with at their last minutes because they are only 18 or 19 year”. He ghastly describes how inhuman it is to die in the battle front, watching bugs, flies and ants attacking the body of your friend body, or the body starting to decompose and stinking, before they can be removed front the frontline. He sums up that the smell of death “is a smell that is so different from anything on this planet. It is a horrifying, putrid smell”. War, he asserted, robs the people the sense of living to see tomorrow, “there is no tomorrow in war”. It also makes people start appreciating the nature, environment and everything in it. “He says “before the sun would come up and go down and you would just go about your everyday life, but, when you wake up one morning realizing that tomorrow I might miss…today might be the last day I see the sun”. The war in Vietnam made him realize how beautiful the world was. He recalled an episode where he saw a woman giving birth, and he points to that event as being crucial and a life changer to him for he started realizing that all the Vietnamese soldiers that he had killed were sons, brothers, fathers and nobody had the right to take them away from their loved ones. “We do not have the right to kill other people’s children. We do not have the right to do that”. He says. Importantly, he points out to lack of care or concern by the government about the returning soldiers and war veterans. He points to the fact that he got no government help or advises to seek professional counseling for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition which faces many returning soldiers, and had to endure sleepless nights and fear of the unknown for a long time before his wife advised him to seek professional help. Therefore, most war veterans end up being very poor, the same thing that drove them into the military “ that is one reason why in America, like eighty percent of homeless men, like men who sleep in the streets and go to shelters, are men who served in the military”. He, therefore, advises young people to examine thoroughly past wars before going into the battle front, because it is the failure to understand these mistakes that have read to repetition of the same mistakes. He further urges students to research how war happens, what causes it, implications on the social and economic policies and never go into any war without examining these things. He states that politicians drive the nations to war, deploying sons and daughters of the commoners yet and their children do not go to the war front. He argues against both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war which, he says, resulted from misinformation and propaganda by the government. The soldiers are misled to believe that they are going into the war so as to make their families back at home safer and more secure. Finally, he cautions poor students from being lured by promises of money and prosperity from the military and end up participating in war without a cause. References Nelson, Allen. Personal Interview. 15 October 2012. Read More