Please address one of the following questions. Essays should be between two and three pages long. If you quote or make direct references to your sources or readings (and you should get into this habit), you must cite them by using footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical references. When you do use one of these forms, use them correctly and be consistent. In Political Science two general sources on style are accepted: The Chicago Manual of Style or Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual For Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. The latter is highly recommended. If you do not own a copy, you should obtain one. Make full use of an introductory paragraph to set up your discussion, state your thesis or main premise, and inform your reader of how you plan to support that thesis. Avoid use of personal anecdotes, and be careful in your use of personal pronouns. There are better ways to emphasize a point than I think, or I believe, or in my opinion. Of course, it is your opinion, or what you think or believe, but why advertise that? Couch your thesis in fact and your sources. Treat your essay as serious academic writing. It is also a good idea to get into the habit of attaching a list of references or a bibliography.
This is the question I picked.
(There are clearly many unhappy similarities between the American experience in Vietnam and that in Iraq. Perhaps the most poignant, however, has to do with the justifications for going to war in each case. Discuss the comparative rationales for war in these two cases and consider the suggestion that emergencies were created by the respective presidents (L. B. Johnson and G.W. Bush). What was eventually learned concerning the actual nature of those so-called emergencies? What does all of this say about a continued American presence in Iraq?)
