Website Spotlight: Obama's War

Website URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/

Introductory Note:

Welcome to one in a series of posts which spotlight quality websites that I use with my U.S. History survey course students at Azusa Pacific University to enrich the regular material in our learning modules.

In this post, I limit myself to those specific aspects of the website which I find fit particularly well within our face-to-face class sessions (each student is required to bring a laptop to class) or as the basis for the students' regularly-assigned written reactions.

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I ask the students to work through the following links:

I. Interviews
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/interviews/

Concentrate on these:

Col. Andrew Bacevich
Richard Holbrooke
Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Lt. Col. John Nagl
Anne Patterson

II. Analysis
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/themes/

Can We Win This?
Afghanistan and the Counterinsurgency War
Pakistan -- The Hardest Problem of All
The Push into Helmand Province
Obama's New Strategy (March 2009)

III. Chronology
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/etc/cron.html

IV. Map
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/etc/map.html

V. Readings (A bit dated--2009--but well done)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/etc/links.html

"Armed Social Work: The Marines New Brief"
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terri-judd-armed-social-work-the-marines-new-brief-1783875.html

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Concluding Note:

I hope you will use this blog post in conjunction with both the modules on my Learning Professor wiki and the numerous other posts in my Website Spotlight series.

1. The website spotlighted in this post fits within the following U.S. History survey course module on the wiki:
http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces.com/Obama

2. The other blog posts in my Website Spotlight series--chronologically displayed by U.S. History survey course module-- can be found on this wiki page:
http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces.com/WEBSITE+SPOTLIGHT