Ryan's Synthesis by Ryan Prunuske

Personal Understanding:

18prunur — 2015-06-09 00:26:17 UTC

My personal understanding of the Vietnam War is that it was the longest war in American history and, to many people, the most unpopular American war. The Vietnam War started on November 1st, 1955 and lasted until April 30th, 1975. The war resulted in about 60,000 American deaths and an estimated 2 million Vietnamese deaths. Near the end of the Vietnam War, an agreement was reached. The U.S. forces were to be withdrawn from any part of Vietnam, and in return, all of the U.S. prisoners of war were released. Then in April 1975, South Vietnam surrendered to the Northern part of Vietnam, and so Vietnam was reunited once again.

Themes Of World History:

18prunur — 2015-06-09 00:27:44 UTC

Research: I found the theme of political structures in my research when I read that America joined the Vietnam War on the South's side because of how they both opposed the spread of Communism.

Book: I found the theme of human environment interactions in Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers when the United States Military used the Agent Orange. Agent Orange is one of the herbicides used to destroy forested land, depriving enemy guerrilla soldiers of food and cover. This is an example of human environment interactions because of how negatively the Agent Orange responded to the civilians causing multiple disabilities and how Agent Orange caused acres and acres of forest to shrivel up and die off.

Lessons Learned:

18prunur — 2015-06-09 00:32:35 UTC

One thing that I learned is that even though war is always thought of all of the fighting and blowing things up, no one really thinks of the aftermath or the long term effect of all the different chemicals and destruction that changes the native people and landscape forever. This relates to the world today because with conflicts like Isis in the Middle East, we know that how they are destroying all of the ancient art, people won't be able to appreciate how skilled the artists were from history and will only have pictures to remember them by instead of being able to see them in real life.