Reflection Week 8

Tuesday we discussed national security documents. I thought it was very interesting how eerily similar the two documents were despite the fact that they were separated by half a century and many changes in world politics. The two documents were very similar even though they seemed to be going after two different enemies. The methods used against these enemies were similar revealing how little the tools of American foreign policy have changed in half a century. In terms of the structure of the discussion I liked it more than our large group discussions. We were able to discuss the issues more in-depth with fewer people and everyone was able to speak more and subsequently we could have more of a conversation. With such small groups you could have a conversation in which each person would have multiple chances to talk rather than just one and therefore I think we were less afraid that we had to say everything we wanted to all at once. We worked together to come up with an answer we all agreed upon rather than fighting with one another as to who was right which provided a nice change of pace.
As far as the Spy Museum goes, I think the whole premise of the museum is more interesting than the museum itself was. Megan pointed this out to me when she said that it was interesting in a free society we had a museum devoted to our spying. The whole purpose of spying is to be secretive and often to hide that you are spying at all and yet there is a museum dedicated to how spying is done which clearly reveals that we have spies. I guess the cat is out of the bag now since everyone knows that all countries have spies. Nevertheless it is still interesting that information about the tools of spying are displayed in such a public way. Anyone could walk in there and learn about spy techniques. Certainly many details have been left out but still this means the United States must be very confident that its spying endeavors will not be compromised by the information presented. However it still strikes me as odd that we have such a museum but maybe that’s just me.
Erica Peterson