Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Cuban Missile Crisis, the Moon, and Civil Rights

I thought it would be interesting to see what was happening in 1962, the year both my parents were born. What I found was that at that time, America was in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The President at the time was Kennedy. Basically, America was in fear of being attacked by the Soviet Union by a missile. Kennedy ordered the blockade of Cuba to prevent missile deployment. The parallel I find is the terrorist attacks that we are trying to evade. As much as I would rather not being in this war, this war is an active way to prevent other terrorist attacks to occur. Just like Kennedy stopped the missile crisis, to stop this terrorist crisis we have to be in this war.

At the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Glen became the first American to ever revolve around the world, and three times too. I can't really find a parallel to this but there is a parallel to the next headline. In 1962, the first ever African American was registered into a college. Today, soon enough, we will be inducting an African American or a woman into the White House, something that has never happened in the history of America. Until 1962, no African American had ever gone to a college until that year.

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