Taken Hostage
History 137
Abilities Based Assignment: Think Piece
Taken Hostage On David Farber's book Taken Hostage, Farber informs us about the Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam. This book tells us how the United States and Iran got into conflict, leading to the Iranians holding American Embassy members hostage as revenge for them feeling betrayed by the United States. It also informs us about other events that occurred in a decade that caused the United States many problems. Reading this book taught me a lot more than what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a boring hard to read book, but it honesty grasped my attention. I like the fact that Farber talked about all the events that lead to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Yes we had already learned quite a bit about it in the research we had to do for the Thursday Topics, but they were not all clear and detailed as the book. For a fact I learned that President Nixon and his key advisor Henry Kissinger tried to replace the simple anti-communism. They tried to do so by using a more pragmatic realpolitik. His realpolitik approach was being attacked by Dixon's Democratic opponent in the 1972 election, senator George McGovern. McGovern attacked Nixon's approach by saying, "Our children look at us for moral guidance-for Americans true ideals. But we protect the prestige of warmonger. And we pay with the soul of our nation" (17). The CIA at Nixon's bidding was engaged in many illegalities in the United States and they helped overthrow the legally elected Chilean government. Operations like these (realpolitik and CIA revelations) left many Americans to question the role of the United States in the world. Although Americas uncertain role in the world, Americans were more worried about the economic issues during that time. The larger crisis in America was that many people expected the economy to do better annually, a dream that seemed to be crushed for many Americans. In the 1970s, the
Abilities Based Assignment: Think Piece
Taken Hostage On David Farber's book Taken Hostage, Farber informs us about the Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam. This book tells us how the United States and Iran got into conflict, leading to the Iranians holding American Embassy members hostage as revenge for them feeling betrayed by the United States. It also informs us about other events that occurred in a decade that caused the United States many problems. Reading this book taught me a lot more than what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a boring hard to read book, but it honesty grasped my attention. I like the fact that Farber talked about all the events that lead to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Yes we had already learned quite a bit about it in the research we had to do for the Thursday Topics, but they were not all clear and detailed as the book. For a fact I learned that President Nixon and his key advisor Henry Kissinger tried to replace the simple anti-communism. They tried to do so by using a more pragmatic realpolitik. His realpolitik approach was being attacked by Dixon's Democratic opponent in the 1972 election, senator George McGovern. McGovern attacked Nixon's approach by saying, "Our children look at us for moral guidance-for Americans true ideals. But we protect the prestige of warmonger. And we pay with the soul of our nation" (17). The CIA at Nixon's bidding was engaged in many illegalities in the United States and they helped overthrow the legally elected Chilean government. Operations like these (realpolitik and CIA revelations) left many Americans to question the role of the United States in the world. Although Americas uncertain role in the world, Americans were more worried about the economic issues during that time. The larger crisis in America was that many people expected the economy to do better annually, a dream that seemed to be crushed for many Americans. In the 1970s, the