In the dual biography The Brothers John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War written by Stephen Kinzer, we explore the life and history of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. John Foster Dulles who was Secretary of State and his brother Allen Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Eisenhower Administration were two extremely powerful men whose actions led the United States into a sequence of foreign journeys with an outcome that still affects the world to this day.
The brothers grew up in a Christian family with their father, Reverend Allen Macy Dulles, who was a preacher and theologian who led them to live the religious life. Their grandfather was secretary of state for a short amount of time for Benjamin Harrison so they had the powerful family ties. It was not until the brothers worked in Lower Manhattan on Wall Street where they rose to power themselves. John Foster Dulles succeeded to become the head manager for Sullivan & Cromwell Firm at the age of thirty-eight while his brother, Allen, was hand chosen by Dwight Eisenhower as the direct...
Shortly after the Civil war had ended and the confederate capital Richmond had fallen, the well known actor John Wilkes Booth decided to kill the President, and with the help of some friends the Vice President and Secretary of State as well. The man George Atzerodt was given the job of killing the Vice President. His plan was to book a room in the same hotel and Vice President Johnson but when the morning of the day he was supposed to commit the assassination came he backed out and could not carry through with the murder. Two other men, Lewis Powell and David Herold, were assigned to kill the Secretary of State William H. Seaward. Powell attempted to shoot him with a revolver but after a misfire attempted to stab Seaward unsuccessfully because of a jaw splint Seaward had on. After the failed assassination Powell and Herold split up. Po...
Is it true Americans are rightfully notorious for creating inaccurate paradigms of what really happened in historical events Americans are tied to? Has America ever censored historical events in order to protect Americans innocent democratic reputation? After reading, “The Best War Ever” by Michael C.C Adams, I have found the answers to these questions to be yes. Some of the myths that Adams addresses in his book include: 1. America was innocent in world war two and was an ever acting protagonist in the war; 2. World war two or any war for that matter can be, or is a “good war” and bring prosperity to America; 3. War world two brought unity to Americans.
This unfortunate legacy of failure in Vietnam carried far past the end of his service as Secretary of Defense. For years after, there have been ongoing debates as to what factors led the outcome of the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until 1995 that Robert McNamara contributed his own viewpoint on where the responsibility for the result of the war fell. McNamara’s memoir, “In Retrospect”, chronicles his perspective on the role he played as Secretary of Defense. It is apparent in his memoir that the public image associated with McNamara is vastly different from the McNamara he presents. Ironically, this infamous war he was so commonly know for may have been a war that privately he did not support.[1] This raises the question—was this hawk actually a
Kennedy, JFK assassination, and after the effect on RFK. But the newer books in Dulles include a wider scope of how the US government was transformed into a state of national security in the year that follow WW II. David Talbots goal in preparing this book is to show the urgency to come to terms with our past and how it is important that we continue to fight for the right to have our history. There is no better book on Allen Dulles and his leadership of the CIA from this one. And it is a very ugly picture. Dulles did basically what makes the US became The Ugly American, but psychotic US in the Third World. He did not respond to crises, Allen Dulles created the
Eisenhower’s formal style differed remarkably with Kennedy’s informal-leaning style of administration characterized by intense cabinet interaction. Eisenhower, through his military orientation, was more attached to a formalized, hierarchical style of i...
The Black Hawk War was a major conflict between the United States of America and the Native Americans. It, like many Native American versus America wars, is fairly unknown. It took place in the year of 1832. There are many things one should know about the Black Hawk War, such as what started it, the major military events, and what happened once the war was finished.
Now that John F. Kennedy started political leadership after the war, Kennedy was elected for House of Representatives. With Kennedy’s younger brother as his campaign manager they worked together fo...
In the film The Fog of War, McNamara learns a number of lessons from the figures of the 20th-century American government. The film offers a view on the human side of the people entrusted to the control the United States and the way their personalities affect the state’s policies. The film provides an insight for historians and politicians into the way individuals and different personalities influence the decisions of the U.S foreign policy. The film is a focus on the fragile side of the leaders in both the mental and physical capacities. The lessons of McNamara indicate the influence of human decisions on the international relations of a nation as seen from the theories of global politics.
The Kennedy clan, the pre-eminent American political family of our time, seems to be cast in the stars, the distant stuff of legend. They march ever more numerous among us. There's a spot on Washington's infamous Beltway where an unsuspecting family might find their children in school with a couple of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's 54 great-grandchildren. That same family could be the neighbors of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, one of the Kennedy clan's five surviving originals (there were nine). It could be served in the Maryland assembly by delegate Mark Shriver, nephew of the martyred John Kennedy (and one of 29 grandchildren of Joe and Rose). And it could fall under the growing political hand of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, oldest child of the murdered Robert Kennedy, now Maryland's lieutenant governor and touted for higher office.
The idea of a society where there is no freedom and the people have no rights, can be described through the warning foresights of a dystopia. In the novel, 1984, a country has lost all liberties to their government and war is commonly used as a political tool, as our government has done in the past. As our country continues down the path to becoming the dystopia described by George Orwell, it is seen that war is used as a political tool to help the government’s own agenda. By using wars to control the social views of the people, the products and wealth of the country, and the opinions of politicians and government officials, the governments of the United States and the country of Oceania can promote their own ideologies on others.
Although born into a politically prominent family on May 29, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s path to presidential popularity had begun way before he was born. In 1849, JFK’s great grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Boston and worked for minimum wage for all of his life that he resided in America (Historic World Leaders). Starting with JFK’s grandfather, Patrick Joseph (P.J.) Kennedy, the life of a Kennedy, from birth to death, revolved around ideas of the want for power and stature. His grandfather, born into a poor family, worked his way up from poverty “to successes in the saloon and liquor-import businesses, branched out into banking, and became a backroom political operator” (Historic World Leaders) becoming a man of prestige just as his family had hoped. Blossoming from a business partnership, PJ Kennedy’s son, Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald in 1914. Joseph Kennedy was quite ...
3. Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War. New York, Oxford University Press, 1981.
One of the longest lasting debates in the United States is the struggle to balance freedom and safety. Throughout history there have been instances were freedoms have been suspended- whether for the better or worse- because the United States was in a time of crisis. The Quasi War against the French, the Civil War, and the First World War were events where presidents found themselves under fire because of their controversial suspension of certain constitutional rights. Should certain freedoms be curtailed in times of crisis? This debate has always been so controversial because there has never been a majority one way or another. There have always been people for suspending freedoms to preserve safety and at the same time there have always been people that have believed that freedom is ultimately more important than safety.
War is the epitome of cruelty and violence, an experience that can prove maddening and strip away some of the most intrinsic characteristics of humanity. Kurt Vonnegut’s experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II inspired his critically hailed novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), in which characters continually search for meaning in the aftermath of mankind’s irrational cruelty ("Kurt Vonnegut: 1922-2007" 287). Both the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and Vonnegut have been in Dresden for the firebombing, and that is what motivates their narrative (Klinkowitz 335). In his anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut expresses the adverse emotional effects of war through the psyche of Billy Pilgrim.
Who is Henry Kissinger? Is he as Jussi Hanhamaki terms him “Dr. Kissinger” (the prince of realpolitik who put his remarkable insights to the service of a nation in deep trouble) or “Mr. Henry” (the power-hungry, bureaucratic schemer bent on self-aggrandizement)? This dichotomy is not the only one that exists when discussing Henry Kissinger. Stephen Graubard, Gregory Cleva, Walter Issacson and Jussi Hanhimäki have all written works that view Kissinger differently. Some of the differences are slight and all four sometimes agree but the best interpretation of Kissinger lies in viewing him through a lens of historical context. This view produces the image of Kissinger as realist who ultimately failed to account for the changing forces in foreign policy, ultimately this leads to his estimation as an architect of American foreign policy whose flaws kept him from realizing the paradigm he established of triangular diplomacy and détente would fail in many parts of the world.