Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Did communism threaten America's internal security after World War II?

After World War II, the question if Communism was threatening America was tossed in the air. I don't think that it was harming our internal security but it was definitely an issue. Outside of the US, places like China were dealing with Communism taking over their country and we tried to stop it so it wouldn't affect us internally. As Fried called it, we were having a "nightmare in red." We had our first and fifth amendments suspended while we were investigated for Communists everywhere. Including places like Hollywood, labor unions, school and public libraries. To help look for this we had HUAC and Taft-Harley Act to help keep Communist out of the US. So it wasn't that it Communism didn't play a threat at all to America, just not to it's internal security, we had that under control. So we had to help other countries to keep us safe by using the Truman Doctrine and Marshall plan. Haynes and Kiehr argued that codes were used to send messages to the Soviet Union but that still didn't really in my opinion affect our internal security. Overall, I don't think that our internal security was threatened, we just needed to check things out to make sure we were safe from a Communist takeover and then continue to do things to keep us safe, but we were never really "threatened."

I would define threatened as at a risk or being in a situation where it is more likely for something to go bad then good so we weren't in a threatened position.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

The Atomic Bombs: Were They Justified?

I agree with the one opinion that the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki was unjust because we already made out statement that the war was done.  The first bomb dropped in Hiroshima, that was just because it was are way saying we are done and you are defenseless; we needed to end this war on top and not at the bottom.  Some say that it wasn't fair that we dropped the bombs in an area that wasn't Anglo-American but I believe that it was fair.  They were the reason we entered the war after they attacked Pearl Harbor, so that's why its fair.  The only thing that makes me feel like both the bombs were unjustified was the fact that it killed so many more people on top of the people already lost during the war.  But I guess we just had to go out with a boom.