Ken Burns' The Vietnam War

[ZachariasX]

if i was called to arms here in spain with the catolinian issue and i took them it would be entirely my mistake

Called to arms by which side?

[DD_Arthur]

I thought it was interesting history. Like every major world event, Vietnam wasn't as B/W as it might seem. The first episode was excellent in laying the background of French involvement. I like how Burns interspersed the way the U.S. followed nearly the same course and its mistakes in America's buildup to war. I also found it fascinating how time and again, the principles involved in leadership knew it wasn't a war anyone wanted to fight and yet didn't know how to get out of it.

 

Hi Rjel.  Thanks for starting this thread.    I'm not much of a one for TV these days so was unaware that the BBC are broadcasting it over here at the moment. 

 

Have now watched up to epsode four.  I think it's outstanding.    I'll be looking out for his Civil War series - a subject I know very little about - when we've concluded Vietnam.  

 

My only remote criticism would be a slight skimming over of what French colonial occupation did to the Vietnamese.  There were very good reasons why all the Vietnamese participants say "we hated the french".

 

Btw - if you are French and reading this thread, don't take the above statement to heart.  At this time all the colonial powers were doing outrageous things.

 

Also - thanks to LBJ - we have accurate records of just about every discussion that took place in the White House from the spring of '64 onwards.  IMO a little more on the decision process within the Oval Office would have been helpful.  This leads back to your point above;  the principles did indeed understand that this was an unwinnable war in the conventional sense.  Why did they not end it?

 

Kennedy gives us the answer back in episode two;  all clear thinking politicians in the demcratic world know what is the right thing to do.

 

They just don't know how to get themselves re-elected afterwards.

 

Edit;  question for the US members of these boards - how does the US High school history curriculum deal with Vietnam?

Edited October 8, 2017 by DD_Arthur

[CanadaOne]

You're pointing on a good point, but they way you do it is brutish. Young person need a proper education and lot of freedom to develop that kind of early responsibility you're demanding. Some still need to become 25 until it shows, far beyond the age they are usually drafted or lured into war. A youth without that privileged education points your way into a fatal direction nearly without any choice. But you did no crime being raised that way. Read the veterans literature - it's full of the deepest regrets. Who are you not to offer understanding?

 

(Later, after a long period of civil life and the chance to reflect, you're right to ask them for the lessons learned. If they still don't show any insight one might start to talk about a criminal behaviour.)

 

Yes, it is brutish. But so is a senseless war that killed millions and continues to kill people until this very day.

 

And I do offer understanding, both to the victims and those who victimized them. But the situation must be scrutinized under a harsh light if it is to be understood and avoided in the future. Unfortunately it has not been avoided, not even close.

[CanadaOne]

It was a different time. A lot of the veterans interviewed said the same thing. This was a war that was only 20 years after the second world war. Their fathers war. A "just war". America, at the time, was seen as a just nation, saviors whether one believes that or not. We live in a different era and it's pretty easy to pass judgement on the past and it's participants.

War is nasty business

"Fate does not excuse criminal behavior." If dropping bombs in a war is criminal behavior why are you playing a game that simulates "criminal behaviour"? "Grand theft il2"

Nobody is going to put a gun in your hands raaaid, don't you worry about that.

 

That it was a "different time" means nothing. The moral treatises the vast majority of the world lean on to help them discern right from wrong, and to determine social laws and norms, predate your "different time" by millennia. If people knew right from wrong 2000 years ago, they knew it 50 years ago.

 

If you are going to draw a moral comparison between flying BOX and committing war crimes, you are most certainly going to need a far, far better argument than the one you have provided to date. I am open to that discussion, but you will lose the argument.

[Rolling_Thunder]

I will lose the argument in your eyes because you clearly see the argument as black and white. Everything you've written in this thread points to that. You generalize.

You're the one talking bombing = criminal behavior on a forum dedicated to a ground attack aircraft. "moral comparison"? Nah, I was merely pointing out the absurd irony in your post. 

"it was a different time" is the evolution of the human race. It's the story of us all. Every nation has ghosts, periods of history that now seem barbaric. From slaver to the genocide of indigenous peoples. Folk signed up for the crusades because they thought it was the "right thing to do."  Maybe future generations will look back at the current world and wonder how we could wear clothes produced in third world sweat shops, how we could use mobile phones produced the same way. Maybe not over breakfast but people die in the manufacture of our luxury goods. Not in their millions but die they certainly do. Are you and I responsible? Do you wonder how the coffee you drink every morning is produced? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you drink "fair trade", maybe you don't have a mobile phone, maybe you're the most moral and conscientious person in the history of the world, a Christ like figure. I doubt it though. Most computer parts are products of the exploitation of the third world and yet there you sit passing judgement.

[CanadaOne]

I'm not even close to being close to being perfect.

 

And a war crime remains a war crime.

[DetCord12B]

While I enjoyed it and all and it was very informative, I was hoping for some more history on the ANZUS (my dad was there NZDF), Korean, Thai, and other coalition forces deployed during the war. It was all just kinda swept aside and only merely touched upon. The biggest omission and a gross oversight IMHO was perhaps Canada. More than 30K Canadians crossed the border to volunteer and fight, and it only earned a passing 8 second mention. 

 

As someone that immigrated from another country to the United States to fight after 9/11, I find that rather disheartening. 

[Retnek]

... But the situation must be scrutinized under a harsh light if it is to be understood and avoided in the future ...

Your merciless rigidity is the wrong way. You're the perfect counterpart for the war-interested parties to produce that disastrous "US against THEM"-feeling. A lot of veterans and other good-minded, but naive-over-idealistic people are trapped in this camp-mentality. We need ways to overcome that iron curtain in peoples minds.

[CanadaOne]

Your merciless rigidity is the wrong way. You're the perfect counterpart for the war-interested parties to produce that disastrous "US against THEM"-feeling. A lot of veterans and other good-minded, but naive-over-idealistic people are trapped in this camp-mentality. We need ways to overcome that iron curtain in peoples minds.

 

My iron curtain of merciless rigidity is composed of "stop killing people for no reason". On that point I am unrepentantly unmovable.

 

I understand that violence is required at times, though always regrettable, but so often is it is not required at all and often amounts to little more than cold blooded murder. A good deal of what happened  in SE Asia was simply that and nothing more. And it seems we have learned nothing since then. Kinda sad, really.

[ZachariasX]

"stop killing people for no reason". On that point I am unrepentantly unmovable.

For reasons it is ok then? Pretty much leaves the killing debatable then, " 'cos I have a reason".

 

So, we have a decade of bloody murder that kept everyone involved, from infant near a rice fields to the President. Yet we have only 9 hours to cover it all. You are prone to leave some things out or justmention them shortly. Calling it "glossing over [whatever I find important]" sounds like a very jealous shot, given the echo Ken Burns got with his documentary in contrast to others.

 

Yet, it is still a good idea to look at other accounts as well. One doesn't have to read or whatch a feature with the will to believe it.

 

For my part, I'm still looking for someone coming up with the great business case (and some numbers with that) of bombing an irrelevant country because:

10,000 "just bombs", on the other, are very good for business!

Given the magins you have on 10'000 bombs, all you can get for that is a nice weekend in Vegas for senior execs of a bomb mill. For that one has to find money one can't find to build a school or fix some highways. On top of that one gets these ungodly, long haired, marxist intellectuals to protest in front of his office.

 

Is that an attractive deal in Canada?

[[CPT]CptJackSparrow]

Verbosity machine over 9000!

[CanadaOne]

For reasons it is ok then? Pretty much leaves the killing debatable then, " 'cos I have a reason".

 

So, we have a decade of bloody murder that kept everyone involved, from infant near a rice fields to the President. Yet we have only 9 hours to cover it all. You are prone to leave some things out or justmention them shortly. Calling it "glossing over [whatever I find important]" sounds like a very jealous shot, given the echo Ken Burns got with his documentary in contrast to others.

 

Yet, it is still a good idea to look at other accounts as well. One doesn't have to read or whatch a feature with the will to believe it.

 

For my part, I'm still looking for someone coming up with the great business case (and some numbers with that) of bombing an irrelevant country because:

Given the magins you have on 10'000 bombs, all you can get for that is a nice weekend in Vegas for senior execs of a bomb mill. For that one has to find money one can't find to build a school or fix some highways. On top of that one gets these ungodly, long haired, marxist intellectuals to protest in front of his office.

 

Is that an attractive deal in Canada?

 

I'm thinking a weekend in Las Vegas isn't really an attractive deal for anyone at the moment. But that's another sad story.

 

My point about the "10,000 bombs" was a colloquial expression of the basic idea of war; it's good for business. There were actually millions of tons of bombs dropped over there for the sake of good business. As for Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos) being irrelevant, I think it was anything but irrelevant in the minds of those who thought it worth burning through a million+ lives to keep the region down.

 

As for killing without a reason, that is another subject worthy of its own debate, one I would be glad to engage in, but perhaps one this forum would not like to see take place. But if the position is taken that anyone who has a reason has the right, then we are drawing equivalencies that would not last two-seconds in the mind of a sane man. A sane man can see the difference between right and wrong, even if wrong had a reason and a goal.

[Danziger]

Every man is right in his own mind. The lord ponders the heart.

[Rolling_Thunder]

I think it was anything but irrelevant in the minds of those who thought it worth burning through a million+ lives to keep the region down.

I may be reading you wrong but I'm getting the impression, from what you write in this thread, that you're under the impression that the U.S. and it's allies were the aggressors?

Let's not forget the North pretty much invaded the south. The north waged a guerilla war using Laos and Cambodia to infiltrate the south. The north was not the romanticized freedom fighters standing up to American aggression. They were the aggressors. They committed atrocities upon the population of the south as well as the North during their fight against the French.

Maybe lessons were learned from Vietnam. The world stood back and let the Rwanda genocide happen. The major powers were criticised for their lack of action. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

[CanadaOne]

"The Lord ponders . . . "

 

You make Him sound like Winnie the Pooh.

[CanadaOne]

I may be reading you wrong but I'm getting the impression, from what you write in this thread, that you're under the impression that the U.S. and it's allies were the aggressors?

Let's not forget the North pretty much invaded the south. The north waged a guerilla war using Laos and Cambodia to infiltrate the south. The north was not the romanticized freedom fighters standing up to American aggression. They were the aggressors. They committed atrocities upon the population of the south as well as the North during their fight against the French.

Maybe lessons were learned from Vietnam. The world stood back and let the Rwanda genocide happen. The major powers were criticised for their lack of action. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

The Western powers had their hands around Vietnam's throat for decades and decades. Vietnam was a colonial territory being run by centers of power thousands of miles away. They, the Vietnamese, had a right to run (and ruin) their own affairs just like everyone else.

 

Just like us.

 

Can you imagine if people 10,000 miles away decided they had the right to drop a few million tons of bombs on North America because they thought we were politically and socially inept?

 

You and I would never have been born.

[Gambit21]

Verbosity machine over 9000!

With the "inane" slider on 10

[CanadaOne]

I may be reading you wrong but I'm getting the impression, from what you write in this thread, that you're under the impression that the U.S. and it's allies were the aggressors?

 

Yes.

 

The war was about maintaining power and control, not freedom, and millions died because of it.

 

And Canada played a despicable role during the war. We sold weapons, like napalm and chemical agents, to the US knowing full well they were being used on civilians.

[Danziger]

"The Lord ponders . . . "

 

You make Him sound like Winnie the Pooh.

Nah I'm not religious. I find groups of adults crying,yelling gibberish, and rolling on the floor to be just as absurd as people sending their sons away to be murdered by other people's sons because some wealthy politicians have a disagreement or rich buddies to award lucrative government contracts "cough" Halliburton "cough".

 

Still I think there are some useful things to take from religion such as the above verse.

[Rolling_Thunder]

The Western powers had their hands around Vietnam's throat for decades and decades. Vietnam was a colonial territory being run by centers of power thousands of miles away. They, the Vietnamese, had a right to run (and ruin) their own affairs just like everyone else.

Just like us.

Can you imagine if people 10,000 miles away decided they had the right to drop a few million tons of bombs on North America because they thought we were politically and socially inept?

You and I would never have been born.

I'm British old boy.

[CanadaOne]

I'm British old boy.

 

So was my dad.

 

Cheers to you.

[Rjel]

Well, all in all, it was a pretty good series. IMHO. Others mileage may vary.

[CanadaOne]

Burns sure knows how to make an interesting documentary series, that's for sure.

 

His baseball series was incredibly good, especially the episodes about the early days of baseball.

[ZachariasX]

I have to check them out then. Never looked into it as the usual features about Baseball are not my cup of tea. But seeing „The Vietnam War“, good execution of a series makes a lot of difference, even if it is (as all other documentaries) slightly biased to points that matter most to the director. But I think that is ok to some extent as long as you still leave it to the audience to make up their own mind. This is making „The Vietnam War“ an interesting proposition, regardless of who you think is the evil guy.

 

Anyone seen Burns‘ „The Civil War“?

[CanadaOne]

My wife got me the Civil War DVD set as a gift. I've seen it end to end at least twice, and there is at least one more viewing in the works. It's excellent.

 

The opening scene where they read the letter from the soldier to his wife is quite moving.

[Lusekofte]

I have not seen this , but I have come over Vietnam war docus with a little insight from the other sides, witch I apprechiate , same goes for WW2 , I am not a anti US fanatic, but I am f***ing absolutely fed up by seeing US pow on every documentary 

[ZachariasX]

My wife got me the Civil War DVD set as a gift. I've seen it end to end at least twice, and there is at least one more viewing in the works. It's excellent.

 

The opening scene where they read the letter from the soldier to his wife is quite moving.

Ok, I'll give it a try then!

[CanadaOne]

I have not seen this , but I have come over Vietnam war docus with a little insight from the other sides, witch I apprechiate , same goes for WW2 , I am not a anti US fanatic, but I am f***ing absolutely fed up by seeing US pow on every documentary 

 

I don't think it's question of being an anti-US fanatic*, it's simply a case of speaking the truth. If the US (or any country) did something wrong, then is deserves to be discussed at least as much as when the US did something right. Anything less is just BS and worse than a waste of time.

 

*This idea of someone labeling another person as "anti-American" as some people will do when these discussions get heated, is interesting, to say the least. The only other times you hear this kind of language is when the commissars label someone as an "anti-Soviet" or a "counter-revolutionary". It's the language of totalitarianism, espousing a monolithic state-sponsored view of the world. Can you imagine if you heard someone say "He's anti-Italian" or "He's anti-Australian". I mean, they'd laugh you off the street. To think that kind of language has any currency with anyone with a free mind is ridiculous.

[Rjel]

My wife got me the Civil War DVD set as a gift. I've seen it end to end at least twice, and there is at least one more viewing in the works. It's excellent.

 

The opening scene where they read the letter from the soldier to his wife is quite moving.

 

That was stunning to hear that letter read. I'm not sure why, modern bias maybe, but I'm always amazed when I hear that level of compassion and eloquence in something written so long ago. It definitely hooked me for the rest of the series. The way they used voice overs to convey the writings was for me the first time I'd seen that technique used in a documentary. It was so well done that after a short time, I almost completely forgot I was looking at still images instead of moving film. An incredible bit of film.

 

As to U.S. bias in film/documentaries, it's a little hard to avoid when the subject audience in U.S. based. Is it really any different from other nationalities' documentaries? I've watch several on Youtube and they seem as slanted towards what I assume their audience is as most American made shows.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Rjel

[Mastermariner]

Thanks for posting. I have always regarded myself as well read on the Vietnam War but there is tons of hidden facts revealed here, and I don’t know which is the most nauseating, the conduct of the war (-crimes!) itself ,or the political ‘theatre’ in the US, e.g. killing millions for re-election...!!

 However; with so much facts and evidence readily available I find it incomprehensible that no accountability ever has been demanded.

 

Master

[CanadaOne]

 

Thanks for posting. I have always regarded myself as well read on the Vietnam War but there is tons of hidden facts revealed here, and I don’t know which is the most nauseating, the conduct of the war (-crimes!) itself ,or the political ‘theatre’ in the US, e.g. killing millions for re-election...!!

 However; with so much facts and evidence readily available I find it incomprehensible that no accountability ever has been demanded.

 

Master

 

 

Those who win a war rarely hold their own accountable, no matter what they did.

 

More than one US president, as well as that despicable war criminal Kissinger, should have lived out their days in a prison cell for what they did.

[katdog5]

No surprise, this docu deals with a lot of myth in the USA, dividing the society until today. For the veterans it's especially difficult to accept that all the brutality and suffering was completely useless. 

 

history is more complex than "completely useless" - for some perhaps

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/world/asia/ho-chi-minh-city-finds-its-soul-in-a-voracious-capitalism.html

 

 

I know a special forces guy who fought with the montagnards - they gave their lives fighting against communism

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/american_military_history/2013/11/the_green_berets_and_the_montagnards_how_an_indigenous_tribe_won_the_admiration.html

 

fighting alongside these guys was very meaningful. they gave their lives for freedom. the fight still goes on today. 

Edited October 27, 2017 by katdog5

[Retnek]

...

fighting alongside these guys was very meaningful. they gave their lives for freedom. the fight still goes on today. 

I won't fight with you about vaguely phrases like "freedom". For the Montagnards it must have been double bitter to finally find their legitimate objectives were simply misused for we-don't-give-a-damn power politics.

[CanadaOne]

People got used and people got dead and "freedom" had nothing to do with any of it.

 

It was a giant war crime that killed millions.

[kendo]

Exemplary series. The highlight of my week's viewing for the past month.

 

Great balance and very moving. I learned a lot.

 

The abiding impression though was sadness at the senseless slaughter that is war - all war.