Acrossed Cultures

For the blog this week, I (Zach) forgot to do it on Monday. So, subsequently I’m going to do it for Monday’s and Wednesday’s classes.

Lately, we’ve been learning about how the country of Cambodia was involved in the Vietnam war, and how afterward their government was overthrown by a communist regime. On Monday, we discussed the end of the Vietnam war, and why Cambodia was involved. During the war, the North Vietnamese sent supplies to the Viet Cong in South Vietnam down the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, which traveled through Cambodia. The U.S. bombed that area of Cambodia in an attempt to cut off the supply line. In that regard, the Cambodians were pulled into matters of the war without their consent. The bombing of the Trail in Cambodia was known as the secret war, because the U.S. kept it quiet, due to the fact that people were not likely to react very kindly to the fact that they were bombing a neutral nation.

For the rest of Monday and Wednesday, we learned about Cambodia after the war. In Cambodia, there had long been an underground communist group called the Khmer Rouge (pronounced KImer Ruje). Cambodia had long been ruled by king Sihanouk, a very popular ruler. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge overthrew King Sihanouk, and took control of Cambodia. From that time until 1979, the ultra communist party ruled over Cambodia with a brutal and ferocious mentality that the world would not know about until the 90s. The Khmer Rouge (as I said) practiced an ultra communist system, which meant no western medical care, no involvement whatsoever with other nations, and everybody would be absolutely equal in every way shape and form, or so they said. The Khmer Rouge did not stay by the principles of communism on which they founded themselves. The people of Cambodia were forced to work tirelessly under pain of death for those four years. Approximately two million people died under the Khmer Rouge regime. The Video that we watched on Wednesday talked about and showed examples of present day Cambodian feelings toward that horrid time period. There are only three survivors still living today who were prisoners of Tuol Sleng, a prison camp in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge rule (essentially their equivalent of Auschwitz). Two of the three were agreed to be in a documentary about the genocide in Cambodia that they were involved in. The documentary also involved former guards from the Khmer Rouge at Tuol Sleng. Obviously, the survivors feelings towards the guards are less than warm and fuzzy. We ended the Documentary right after the guards and prisoners finished talking about how they felt concerning their pasts. It is obvious how the survivors would feel ( remorseful, angry, and distraught), but the real questi0n was would the guards fell the same way toward their atrocities that they committed. It seemed as if they did not feel a great deal of remorse, because they felt as if they did not have a real choice concerning what they did. It is true that the Khmer Rouge gave them two decisions, work for them, or suffer the same fate as those that they were forced to kill and torture. The men were scared and would much rather kill than be killed. However, does that condemn the crimes that they committed? It is an interesting debate, and I’m sure that we will pursue it next class.

~Zach

In our last class, we added new information about John F. Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Lyndon B. Johnson. We made heads where we had to fill in the thoughts of a historical figure – like Ngo Dinh Diem, Ho Chi Minh or JFK. We also contrasted capitalism and communism. For JFK, we talked about his presidency and how communism in the world affected his decisions about the Vietnam War.

The US first got involved in Vietnam because the US wanted to help the French – at that time Vietnam was a colony of France. (France was being imperialist – imperialism means to spread your influence and power.)

The US also got involved because of communism. The US government believed in the domino theory – the domino theory held that a country next to a communist country would become communist.

The Domino Theory - How Communism Spreads

Also the Cold War was going on between the USSR (communist) and the USA – they gave each other the “cold shoulder” because both had nuclear weapons but didn’t want to kill thousands of people.
Ho Chi Minh was the Vietnamese leader who wanted independence from France and was a communist leader. He wanted to separate peacefully. When France gave Vietnam independence, France and the US forced Vietnam to form TWO countries – North and South Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem was an anti-communist and president of South Vietnam.

North Vietnam was controlled by communists. Communism is when the government controls the economy and emphasizes sharing with the group.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the president of the USA but he was cautious about involvement in Vietnam.
….To be continued….

We thought this class was fantabulous, koolio, fantibulous, interesting, fun, materialistic, awesome, cool (times two), educational, raggle-fraggaly, and supercalifragilistic-expealidocious.