i need help - what was REALLY going on during the cold war?

[Fabi]

in my history class the cold war and past WWII germany are basically our topic now... and i have been wondering and wondering why it is that i find my history class so meaningless and incredibly stupid... today i found out... basically we're only learning 'facts' but have no way of interpreting them...

we never actually talked about what the problems between the US and the USSR really were... we're pretty much working with the assumption that the russians were the bad guys, and the US the good guys...

i might agree on the USSR part, but i dont really think the US were the 'goooooood' guys....
do you guys know any essays online by authors like chomsky, that deal with the topic? or any books were chomsky goes into talking bout the cold war?

i hate my history teacher.... also we treat germany as if it had been in a 'either US or USSR' situation... which is bullshit... in my eyes siding with either side was complete bullshit... but i guess that might just be me...

[vox]

Hi.

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but I left this link for someone else earlier today. You'll find excerpts from a book called Killing Hope by William Blum there, which detail the various US military and covert actions since WWII. Many of these were justified by the gov't as "fighting communism." Really, the US was generally fighting democracy.

Take a look:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Kil...gHope_page.html (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html)

Also, you might want to check out the book Lies My Teacher Told Me which was written by a history professor and explains that the way history is taught in US high schools gives an inaccurate picture of the world, and it's very readable. You'd probably like it. And there's always A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which is something of a classic.

vox

[Sol]

Chomsky's Year 501 deals with this directly.

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/year/

[Fabi]

thanks for the help...
chomsky's 'dettering democracy' had something on it, too...
tomorrow i'll have to take a history exam on the topic...