[space]

Hey,

I need a little help on something.

But before I begin, I scored an A, 75 percent for my History prelims. I hope that I'll be able to score that well for the real IGCSE History exam in October. I'm really scared that I'll score lower.

Anyway, I'm confused on 'How far' questions and a little on 'The Most'.

Example of a questions is this: How far could the US withdrawal from the Vietnam War be blamed on military failure?

Yeah, military failure of course was a cause that led to the US withdrawl in Vietnam. However, how would you ever know how far for this situation? The reason is that the military failure actually led to the high cost of war and public opinion influenced by the media. Without the military failure, the US citizens might not have protested. It boils down to the probability which you will never know. So, how is one supposed to answer such a question? Should the answer be, 'The US withdrawal from Vietnam could be blamed on military failure to a certain unknown extent as it might and might not have led to public opinion and the high cost of war', and so on?

Is this where Historians disagree about?

Anyhow, given such a question, how are you going to disagree and agree? It's different from a question like 'How far could the failure of the League of Nations be blamed on the Great Depression?' This question would be easier to answer even though it is a 'How far' question as the reasons are not related, they are clearly separated. The League's weak organisation/structure had nothing to do with the Great Depression. Whereas the public opinion (Vietnam War) could have been related to military failure, you never know the probablity as there are no figures.

This year, the IGCSE Paper 2 would be focused on the Vietnam War and honestly, I really dislike studying the Vietnam War. I think I understand how the US people felt during that period of time because it just kept going on and on in stalemate. I felt fed up when reading the Vietnam War in the textbook. Haha.

Any help would really be appreciated.

Thank you.

[MrJohnDClare]

Really good post.

I'll start at the beginning; be patient - I'll come to what you raised towards the end.

'How far' (and 'which of however-many') essays are about three skills:
Describe
Explain
Assess

In the essay on Vietnam, for instance, it raises the issue of how far military defeat was responsible for the US withdrawal.
Your first section, therefore:
1a. briefly describes the military defeat
1b. explains how it led to the US withdrawal
1c. assesses how important it was as a factor in that

Your second section:
2a. briefly describes other factors which led to the withdrawal
2b. explains (for each of them) how it led to the US withdrawal
2c. assess how important they were

(as an aside, I am absolutely in agreemtn with you about 'how does one assess' - there is no numerical scale for such a thing. However, you CAN look into politicians statements to see what things they mentioned, an there were opinion polls in the US etc which you can use to begin to assess on a spectrum - like you get in the opinion surveys - of 'vital_important_someimportance_not very_not at all')

Finally, a conclusion will compare section one with section 2 and come to a JUDGEMENT about which was the more important.

Now, one of the factors in your post was the issue that public opinion - which was arguably the major factor in causing the withdrawal - was in fact determined by the scale of the military defeat.
This is just SUCH a clever thought, and what you need to do is to decide where you're going to get it into your essay!
One place you could get it in would be to include it in at point 1b - the explanation of how military defeat led to withdrawal.
Where I would put it in, however, would be in the conclusion, where I would pull it out of the hat as 'the deciding factor' in my comparison of the two sides. The other factors (section 2) were very important, but so was the military defeat (section 1) - but the military defeat WAS the most important factor because it caused the other factors (and therefore was a double whammy).

A bit trite - but it's only GCSE, and there is an element of jumping through hoops here.

Get back to us with the further thoughts you;re bound to have.

[space]

Hey,

Thank you for your reply.

Well, I sent an email to my History teacher and he talked about it briefly in class today.

He said that we'll need to agree and disagree when it comes to questions on 'How far'. But I'd say that the question on Vietnam would be tough.

Anyhow, he said it like that:

military failure -----> poor public opinion -----> vietnamisation

A -----> B -----> C

Yes/Agreeing with the question would be military failure leading to poor public opinion. For the No/Disagreeing section, we'll write poor public opinion leading to the US government comingup with the policy of vietnamisation.

But I still find this really confusing. How are you supposed to write it out?

Yes, military failure was the blame for the US withdrawal in Vietnam to a large extent. The military failure was ___________________________________. This led to the US citizens protesting against the government's decision to get involved in Vietnam. On the other hand, the public opinion also led to the US withdrawal in Vietnam as the government was pushed to adopt the policy of Vietnamisation. Blah, blah, blah.

Hmm... My teacher said that since it's A to B to C, you need B to get from A to C. That's why B has a share in whatever outcome.

What do you think about this?
I'm still trying to absorb.

By the way, do you have any resources on the Vietnam War online? The whole Paper 2 is on Vietnam this year.

Thank you.

[MrJohnDClare]

I can see the sense of that, but it's not as easy as that is it?

Public opinion was NOT just formed by the military - the civil rights movement (cf the disproportionate number of blacks who died), the cancellation of Johnson's Great Society welfare initiative to pay for the war, the hippy 'make peace not war' movement etc. all helped to mould public opinion a well.

And was public opinion responsible for ending the war? It strikes me that - although it was obviously a factor - the Presidents were well able to IGNORE public opinion, and ended the war when they were able, not when public opinion demanded. In fact, it is arguable that the war ended with a military victory - when the peace negotiations looked as though they were going to collapse, Nixon notoriously 'bombed the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table' (actually, it isn't as simple as that, and some historians interpret this period of the war differently, but nevetheless, it was the public perception that Nixon's massive bombing campaign had secured North Vietnamese agreement for peace).

Not just a simple linear development.

PS - on public opinion, you must suss out the contribution of Walter Cronkite.

[space]

Hmm...

I've never heard of Walter Cronkite before.

Anyhow, if this were the case, wouldn't military failure be blamed for the US withdrawal in Vietnam to a small extent even though it was the starting point?

By the way, is the huge cost of war considered as a military failure?
---------
It's so unlucky to be doing the whole of Paper 2 on the Vietnam War this year. There goes my A.

[MrJohnDClare]

space, on Oct 4 2008, 04:30 AM, said:

I've never heard of Walter Cronkite before.

worthwhole finding out - google him + Vietnam - because he had a huge effect on public opinion.

Quote

Anyhow, if this were the case, wouldn't military failure be blamed for the US withdrawal in Vietnam to a small extent even though it was the starting point?

fair comment

Quote

By the way, is the huge cost of war considered as a military failure?

I certainly see your point and you could argue that if it suits your purpose - or you could argue that it is something different - it just depends on how you want your argument to go. The huge expenditure was indeed PART of th scale of the military disaster. On the other hand, it had civil results (e.g. the abandonment of Johnson's Great Society project) which were anything but military.

Quote

It's so unlucky to be doing the whole of Paper 2 on the Vietnam War this year. There goes my A.

Not oif you consider every question with the depth of insight you're showing over this!!!

[space]

This is the IGCSE answer to the question 'How far could the US withdrawal in Vietnam be blamed on military failure? (It came out in the 2005 Paper 1)

e.g. Military failure

The cost of war was highlighted by ‘The Tet Offensive. There were
nearly 500,000 troops in Vietnam and America was spending between
$20 to $30 billion a year yet little impression was being made and the
Vietcong were able to launch major offensives. This huge spending
meant cutbacks in spending on social reform.’
‘In 1967 ‘Life Magazine’ calculated it cost $400,000 for each Vietcong
guerrilla killed.’

‘The policy of search and destroy, bombing and the use of chemical
weapons failed and Johnson changed the policy after the Tet
Offensive as he realised the war could not be won militarily. A policy
of Vietnamisation was adopted.’

‘Public opinion was changing. The war was very costly in terms of
military supplies and yet the Vietcong could still attack Saigon.’
‘This was the first televised war and American people were horrified at
the barbaric nature of American attacks an example being My Lai.’
‘As more and more soldiers returned in body bags or were considered
to be on drugs, public opinion turned.’
‘It led to open criticism of Johnson – “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids
did you kill today”.’

‘The Media had a significant impact. It showed children being burned
by napalm and people in villages massacred.’
---------
Don't you think that this is a weak answer?

Firstly, wasn't the Tet Offensive the result of military failure?
Secondly, wasn't part of the public opinion due to military failure and huge cost?
The huge cost was the result of military failure too.
Thirdly, didn't the media expose all those images because of the US military failure? (I think that the My Lai Massacre was a military failure as a result of the guerrilla tactics.)

Anyhow, I think that I know how to answer this question with agreements and disagreements, and meeting the criteria of 'how far'. I could say that the military failure caused poor public opinion. This is an agreement. But on the side of disagreement for public opinion, I could talk about Walter Cronkite and what you mentioned about the hippies. As for the government's adoption of the Vietnamisation, they adopted it to please the US citizens so that they could keep their status as being President or whatever. Huge cost of war is a military failure due to the guerrilla tactics. Something like that. What do you think?

[MrJohnDClare]

Agree with you - though to be fair, these markschemes often merely list the 'kind of things pupils might say'.
You answer, however, will be much better.
Rememebr to flag up your agree-disgaree sections with clear connectives - 'However', 'Therefore', 'By contrast' etc.

I think you are ready, in the conclusion, to write about the irrelevance of the question because of the inter-connectivity of everything - although that would be something I would expect more of an A-level answer.

[space]

Quote

I think you are ready, in the conclusion, to write about the irrelevance of the question because of the inter-connectivity of everything - although that would be something I would expect more of an A-level answer.

What do you mean by that? - Writing about the irrelevance of the question because of their inter-connectivity of everything?

Can that really be done? In A-levels?

The reason is that I sort of questioned the question in my History test last term and my teacher said that I can't do that. If I didn't remember wrongly, it was about the Korean War. United States, United Nations and General Douglas MacAurther. Sometimes a question can be really broad though.

Anyhow, I guess this is what OCD does to a person's mind. I have OCD and that's why I obsess over things like that and have a huge tendency to look too deep and get all confused.

Quote

Rememebr to flag up your agree-disgaree sections with clear connectives - 'However', 'Therefore', 'By contrast' etc.

Yeah, I'll remember to. Thank you.

By the way, would it be fine if I came up with my answer and post it here some time?

[MrJohnDClare]

space, on Oct 8 2008, 02:22 PM, said:

Quote

I think you are ready, in the conclusion, to write about the irrelevance of the question because of the inter-connectivity of everything - although that would be something I would expect more of an A-level answer.

What do you mean by that? - Writing about the irrelevance of the question because of their inter-connectivity of everything?

No. I wouldn't advise you to criticise the question. Personally, I LOVE it when that happens, but some teachers get really stuffy about it, so it isn't worth the risk.
What I mean was that you can raise the inter-connectivity of it all as a rabbit-from-the-hat conclusion without criticisng the question.

There's something called the Hegelian dialetic, which is a general-purpose theory about how arguments go, and it goes like this:
Thesis - original idea
Antithesis - a counter-idea/ contradiction of the original idea
Synthesis - a new idea, which arises out of the conflict of thesis and antithesis.

Your 'argument' essay can use these ideas, especially when you have as deep-a-thinking brain as yours.
Keep it simple at first:
Thesis - there is an argument that it was military failure
Antithesis - there are lots of arguments against this/ alternative possiblities - esp public opinion.

But then you can break lose and share all your queries and thoughts, ending with:
Synthesis - hey, the two were so completely interlinked they were actually ONE THING, not two different things ... it's not a question of'either', but of 'both'.

Quote

Anyhow, I guess this is what OCD does to a person's mind. I have OCD and that's why I obsess over things like that and have a huge tendency to look too deep and get all confused.

See it as a blessing. Now you have the dialectic model, you can use the thesis stage simply to sum up what the 'obvious' answer is (without questioning it). Then you can put your incisive, destructive intellect to raising all kinds of objections in the Antithesis stage.
And then you can knowlingly, and joyfully, let your OCD mind run as riot as it wants raising all those caveats and thoughts in the Synthesis/conclusion.

Quote

By the way, would it be fine if I came up with my answer and post it here some time?

Don't. We can't hope ever to mark them. We've all got jobs, families and some sort of sad lives and there is just no way we can be a draft-marking service. Sorry - hand it in see how your teacher marks it.
(Thanks)

[space]

Haha...

Alright, no problem.

I just thought someone might be interested in my answer.

History is such an interesting subject...

[space]

Hey...

Okay, it's about the My Lai Massacre now.

I don't think that William Calley should be charged for murdering the civilians. I mean, I read from the textbook that Calley and his team of soldiers, the Charlie Company were informed to destroy the houses and kill all livestocks. They were told that there are about 200 Viet Congs in My Lai and were instructed to go there on a Sunday as all the villagers went to the market. Calley the other soldiers were just carrying out what they've been told to do. I mean, since it was hard to differentiate the peasants from the Viet Congs, they just killed them all. Why should they be charged of murder and furthermore, they were being instructed.

Am I missing something here?

[MrJohnDClare]

Calley and the others certainly argued this successfully, and it is true that their orders were to destroy; they were psyched up to revenge recent US losses.
Other teams, dropped later, also went into other villages and killed the inhabitants indiscriminately.

On the other hand, it is very difficult to agree with them that an unarmed grandmother with an infant is a dangerous guerrilla warrior.

Equally, it is hard to argue that a group of unarmed woman and girls, sheltering behind their grandmother, are hostile enemy fighters from whom your life is in danger when you are first ordering them to strip for raping before you shoot them.


Similarly, is it well established that 'orders' do not allow you to commit crimes against humanity - that was established at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII, when the Nazis argued that they had killed Jews only because they were obeying orders from above.

MY OPINION (for what it is worth): History is full of times when soldiers run amuk with blood-lust, and it seems to me that My Lai is a fairly cut-and-dried example. Calley should have spent a long time in a US jail, and the fact that he didn't is an example of US ambiguity towards human rights depending whether the atrocity is committed by or against US citizens.

On the other hand, I think most people in the US at the time felt that it was an example of:
1. the youth of US infantrymen (average age 19)
2. the lack of intelligence/education of many US infantrymen (Calley was a college drop-out)
thrown into a terrifying and impossible situation.

My Lai can equally be portrayed as the result of the indiscipline and anti-Vietnamese racism that the US military leadership had allowed to infect the troops.

[space]

Thank you.

Yeah, you're right.

But did the USA actually kill those Vietnamese in the photo?

That's so not cool at all.

Do you know... I read from my teacher's textbook that Eisenhower commented if an election were to take place in Vietnam, 80% of the people would vote for Communism.

Duh, the USA was like battling against themselves all the while, kinda like slapping their own face. Every time they dropped a bomb, more Vietnamese turned to the Viet Congs, communists. It already took like what, US$400,000 (75 bombs and 400 artillery shells) to kill guerrilla fighter. It's like one Viet Cong dies but communists gain more support because the bombing campaign. Well, just my thought, not sure if you get what I'm saying.

[MrJohnDClare]

space, on Nov 3 2008, 01:52 AM, said:

But did the USA actually kill those Vietnamese in the photo?

Yes