A few days ago
nicole_marie8201

History paper help!?

Im having trouble answering this essay question for U.S. History II – The text is huge and Im having trouble sorting out what I need and what I dont need for this assignment. Also, the professor has disappeard from the class again and hasnt returend and emails or calls with questions in two weeks (online college course, this has happened several times before). Any help with this question is greatly appreciated!

Some pundits have advanced the “wag the dog” theory of domestic scandal and foreign policy. American presidents, some argue committ the U.S. to overseas conflicts in order to divert public attention from national unrest or political outcry. Evaluate this contention from 1945-2001. Have U.S. presidents unnecessairly involved troops and monetary funds thereby masking legitamate and pressing domestic concerns, or have presidents relucatntly become involved in overseas conflicts for legitamate reasons even though social reforms could suffer?

Top 1 Answers
A few days ago
Jennifer B

Favorite Answer

This is a hard question, because it really is one based on opinion. I suppose what I would do is look at what sort of overseas conflicts each presidents have engaged in between 1945-2001. Then, I would look at how supported the presidents were in their actions- by congress and by popular support.

Another thing to analyze (where possible) would be reasons given for engaging in it and the reasons that surfaced later. Also, look at how much those wars ‘solved’ the problems they were intended to.

Also one can look at their ‘lets go to war’ speeches to see how ‘into war’ they were. Another thing to look at would be their campaign platform- did they campaign that they were going to do a bunch of social reforms and then something happened to change that?

That’s a few ideas of where to go with it. Hope that helps.

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