Daily Campus

Originally posted by

Tim

Excellent op-ed! Hats off to the authors and the paper for publishing it. Bravo!

Originally posted by

jdyoub

Response to article on proposed Bush Library from two SMU faculty members

Last time I checked, History is still being written regarding the current Presidency. Good or bad, SMU has a chance to capture this for future generations. Much like the University of Texas and Texas A&M have done regarding their past presidents, good or bad, they have captured the history.

As for comments about global warming in your article, I took Anthropology at SMU and was taught the last ice age ended 10K years ago. The earth has been warming up ever since. Scientist do not know why, can only speculate. There were no GM SUV's being built in Arlington TX back then, so they were not the cause.
Fact.
I have been to China and India and have seen how much raw, unfiltered coal pollution they put out into the air every day. The sun is blacked out and day looks like night. If you think watching a political documentary by Al Gore is fact about global warming, visit the world of China and take your own Anthropology class at SMU.

As for the war in Iraq, we had one administration that chose to do nothing - (we are talking history, I believe something SMU views as an important subject). The World Trade Center was first bombed in 1993. The U.S. Cole ( A U.S. Warship) was attacked in 2000, and countless other attacks on U.S. embassies and facilities abroad from 1993 to 2000.
The U.S. did nothing. There is a library in Arkansas that documents this. Was it right or wrong?

Then 3000 people were killed in New York and the Pentagon in 2001. Now, we are doing something. Is it right or wrong?

Well, my kids will learn and experience that fact down the road (and I suspect I will too if I live long enough - kind of like learning who really killed JFK in 2017 or whenever our Govt. decides to release those records).
However, Sadaam Hussein will no longer threaten my kids nor my family from afar (nor will he threaten the Shite's nor the Kurds), nor harbor Al-Qaeda leaders like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I already have drawn the conclusion that 8 years of no response lead to 9/11, much like the great acts of appeasement by Mr. Chamberlin. But, that is my opinion. What will the history teachers teach us about 9/11? Will SMU take part in this? Will SMU lead this history debate?

And I would rather my kids not get attacked by some airplane flying into their place of work 20 years from now guided by one of Saddam's henchmen or an Al Queda operative he is providing refuge to. Again, my opinion, not a fact.
Facts will come from history and what we experience over the next 20 - 40 years or more. I hope they are teaching history about the Vietnam War now at SMU and President Johnson's legacy, but I don't know. How many Vietnamese did he kill and to what purpose? How many did the French kill before President Johnson? Who is generating that history lesson? Who is preserving my uncle's legacy for his three tours of duty in Vietnam, for a war he did not vote for nor that Congress declared? I am hoping the UT faculty and Johnson library have these facts, and historians are writing their lessons for our current generation, or at least debating the subject. I am hoping that is what Acadamia still does in America.

The library will be one place where present day decision and policy will be kept, right or wrong. But decision are being made, not "no decision" as has been recorded from 1993 to 2000 regarding the war on terror.
The easy decision for any politician is no decision. I see that from politicians at my work place everyday, pretending to be managers. However, they are not considered the leaders of the company by the employees. Fact.
What kind of leader does America want and which one did America vote for and why? Who will document this and debate this? SMU?
From 2001 to today, history is still being written, and a teaching institution offered the opportunity should gather the documents, policy, and the data, and debate and draw their own conclusions, and also let the public and future generations visit and learn, and decide what was right or wrong.

Some of the good things people forget from 2001 to today (that I hope somebody captures for the history books): Unemployment swells, a recession, and almost the collapse of our Airline industry occurred after 9/11. I traveled to Atlanta in October 2001. DFW was like a ghost town. Airplanes lined up wing tip to wing tip on the tarmac, empty and dark. I hope somebody has pictures of this for the library. Travelers and vacationers staying home because we were all afraid of the big, bad Jihad boogeyman. I took a trip to Mexico in November 2001, it was not much better.
We recovered from that dark point in time through leadership, through tax cuts, through aggressive back to work legislative bills, and from aggressive security upgrades. Does anybody have picture of DFW airport from 2002 or 2003? Thus far, the U.S. has been successful in keeping our enemies out of this country. Back in 2001, every expert said "it wasn't a question of if we would be attacked again, but when."

History will show whether the steps taken in 2002 and 2003 were right or wrong. However, for those folks at DFW airport, American Airlines, the travel industry, and people like myself who provide computer equipment to those people, I am thankful I did not lose my job during those dark times in U.S. History after 9/11. My daughter was born in 2002 and I did not have to go scrounging for medical insurance because I still had a job, and a President that acted swiftly to help this industry recover. Right or wrong.

This history should be captured and remembered for future generations. For all the factory workers in Arlington TX that build GM SUV's, they should be thankful the U.S. did not get pulled into any global agreements on CO2 control that does not address the real culprits, India and China. My opinion. Who will write the facts for the history books and teach future generations? Who will take the pictures of the GM workers in Arlington that have prospered the past 6 years? Who will debate this point for future generations?

No president is perfect, no legacy is perfect, no point in time in U.S. history is perfect (albeit many older people I talk to who are Caucasian believe the 50's were perfect and believe the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations were the best - and life was wonderful and simple, and "everybody loved the U.S."). I am Hispanic, and would disagree the 50's were the Golden years for the U.S. based on my own parent's treatment and prejudice applied to them during those times. I believe the Russians and the Cubans would also disagree.

However, negative events should not stop Presidential libraries from that era from going up to record that history. Just as negative events from teh Johnson administration did not stop the University of Texas.
The good thing about the U.S. is that people learn, they adapt, and we try to correct our past mistakes. But those mistakes or issues have to be captured somewhere and the lessons learned need to be taught somewhere.
The U.S. history is what it is, good and bad.
Based on your opinion, or your own personal experience or agendas, many people will draw their own conclusions.
Time will tell.
However, The custodians of that history should be mindful, and any historian grateful, if they can participate in the preservation and future learning and teaching of that history for future generations. I believe that is why we have private Academic institutions for higher learning, teaching the good with the bad. At least that is what the faculty at SMU taught me back in 1983 (when Reagan was considered the Cowboy and the war-monger by some faculty at SMU) - The SMU faculty gave me high honors for learning about this way of thinking when I graduated, I hope they were not wrong. At least my employeer likes the way I think.
Maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong.

My opinion.