Ken Burns "Vietnam" Documentary Series Begins Tonight

You should set it to record so you can watch the dirty birds whoop the packers live!!

Thanks what I'm going to do at least. Thanks for posting the link.
 
Radar Contact said:
You should set it to record so you can watch the dirty birds whoop the packers live!!

Thanks what I'm going to do at least. Thanks for posting the link.
Click to expand...

It's set to record too. I'll have to check and see if I get the game in my area. Always great when the Pack whips some dirty bird ass. Whoop whoop!

edit: Whoop! It's Sunday Night Packer time...cool. Didn't realize it was on tonight.

NFL-Atlanta-Falcons-vs-Green-Bay-Packers.jpg
 
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Got out of three sets of orders to RVN. Don't plan on watching what I missed. Friends descriptions of bodies piled up like cord wood was enough for me. Some day I'll find LBJ's grave and **** on it.
 
It's interesting hearing the story from the current Vietnamese government's position. I would say the War Memorial in central HCMC is relatively unbiased, although not complimentary to the US. The kids in high school are taught that the South Vietnamese supported the North Vietnamese in a unified effort to expel the Americans from Vietnam.
 
Sac Arrow said:
The kids in high school are taught that the South Vietnamese supported the North Vietnamese in a unified effort to expel the Americans from Vietnam.
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Wow. I wonder how they explain why so many South Vietnamese escaped ahead of the final North Vietnamese invasion?
 
I dream of Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Jane Fonda handcuffed together in Hell. Along with a goodly number of USAF commanders. When it comes to pure stupidity, raw and willful ignorance, near perfect incompetence, plenty of historical notables are in the running, but for my money, the Johnson clown-college takes top honors.

At least it started SAC's too-long delayed decline into oblivion. . .
 
Yup, like running the B-52s in and out there, day after day, on the same route. Same altitudes, same turns, etc. All NVN had to do wait on 'em.
 
I got this as a forwarded email today about being skeptical about the series. Just passing it on with no judgement attached:

Be skeptical of Ken Burns’ documentary: The Vietnam War

by Terry Garlock

Some months ago I and a dozen other local veterans attended a screening at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta – preview of a new documentary on The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The screening was a one hour summation of this 10-part documentary, 18 hours long.

The series will begin showing on PBS Sunday Sep 17, and with Burns’ renowned talent mixing photos, video clips and compelling mood music in documentary form, the series promises to be compelling to watch. That doesn’t mean it tells the truth.

For many years I have been presenting to high school classes a 90 minute session titled The Myths and Truths of the Vietnam War. One of my opening comments is, “The truth about Vietnam is bad enough without twisting it all out of shape with myths, half-truths and outright lies from the anti-war left.” The overall message to students is advising them to learn to think for themselves, be informed by reading one newspaper that leans left, one that leans right, and be skeptical of TV news.

Part of my presentation is showing them four iconic photos from Vietnam, aired publicly around the world countless times to portray America’s evil involvement in Vietnam. I tell the students “the rest of the story” excluded by the news media about each photo, then ask, “Wouldn’t you want the whole story before you decide for yourself what to think?”

One of those photos is the summary execution of a Viet Cong soldier in Saigon, capital city of South Vietnam, during the battles of the Tet Offensive in 1968. Our dishonorable enemy negotiated a cease-fire for that holiday then on that holiday attacked in about 100 places all over the country. Here’s what I tell students about the execution in the photo.



Enemy execution by South Vietnam’s Chief of National Police, 1968

“Before you decide what to think, here’s what the news media never told us. This enemy soldier had just been caught after he murdered a Saigon police officer, the officer’s wife, and the officer’s six children. The man pulling the trigger was Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s Chief of National Police. His actions were supported by South Vietnamese law, and by the Geneva Convention since he was an un-uniformed illegal combatant. Now, you might still be disgusted by the summary execution, but wouldn’t you want all the facts before you decide what to think?”

The other one-sided stories about iconic photos I use are a nine year old girl named Kim Phuc, running down a road after her clothes were burned off by a napalm bomb, a lady kneeling by the body of a student at Kent State University, and a helicopter on top of a building with too many evacuees trying to climb aboard. Each one had only the half of the story told by news media during the war, the half that supported the anti-war narrative.

Our group of vets left the Ken Burns documentary screening . . . disappointed. As one example, all four of the photos I use were shown, with only the anti-war narrative. Will the whole truth be told in the full 18 hours? I have my doubts but we’ll see.

On the drive home with Mike King, Bob Grove and Terry Ernst, Ernst asked the other three of us who had been in Vietnam, “How does it make you feel seeing those photos and videos?” I answered, “I just wish for once they would get it right.”

Will the full documentary show John Kerry’s covert meeting in Paris with the leadership of the Viet Cong while he was still an officer in the US Naval Reserve and a leader in the anti-war movement? Will it show how Watergate crippled the Republicans and swept Democrats into Congress in 1974, and their rapid defunding of South Vietnamese promised support after Americans had been gone from Vietnam two years? Will it show Congress violating America’s pledge to defend South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese ever broke their pledge to never attack the south? Will it portray America’s shame in letting our ally fall, the tens of thousands executed for working with Americans, the hundreds of thousands who perished fleeing in overpacked, rickety boats, the million or so sent to brutal re-education camps? Will it show the North Vietnamese victors bringing an influx from the north to take over South Vietnam’s businesses, the best jobs, farms, all the good housing, or committing the culturally ruthless sin of bulldozing grave monuments of the South Vietnamese?

Will Burns show how the North Vietnamese took the city of Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive, bringing lists of names of political leaders, business owners, doctors, nurses, teachers and other “enemies of the people,” and how they went from street to street, dragging people out of their homes, and that in the aftermath of the Battle of Hue, only when thousands of people were missing and the search began did they find the mass graves where they had been tied together and buried alive?

Will Burns show how America, after finally withdrawing from Vietnam and shamefully standing by while our ally was brutalized, did nothing while next door in Cambodia the Communists murdered two million of their own people as they tried to mimic Mao’s “worker paradise” in China?

Will Burns show how American troops conducted themselves with honor, skill and courage, never lost a major battle, and helped the South Vietnamese people in many ways like building roads and schools, digging wells, teaching improved farming methods and bringing medical care where it had never been seen before? Will he show that American war crimes, exaggerated by the left, were even more rare in Vietnam than in WWII? Will he show how a naïve young Jane Fonda betrayed her country with multiple radio broadcasts from North Vietnam, pleading with American troops to refuse their orders to fight, and calling American pilots and our President war criminals?

Color me doubtful about these and many other questions.

Being in a war doesn’t make anyone an expert on the geopolitical issues, it’s a bit like seeing history through a straw with your limited view. But my perspective has come from many years of reflection and absorbing a multitude of facts and opinions, because I was interested. My belief is that America’s involvement in Vietnam was a noble cause trying to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia, while it had spread its miserable oppression in Eastern Europe and was gaining traction in Central America, Africa and other places around the world. This noble cause was, indeed, screwed up to a fare-thee-well by the Pentagon and White House, which multiplied American casualties.

The tone of the screening was altogether different, that our part in the war was a sad mistake. It seemed like Burns and Novick took photos, video clips, artifacts and interviews from involved Americans, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, civilians from south and north, reporters and others, threw it all in a blender to puree into a new form of moral equivalence. Good for spreading a thin layer of blame and innocence, not so good for finding the truth.

John M. Del Vecchio, author of The 13th Valley, a book considered by many Vietnam vets to be the literary touchstone of how they served and suffered in the jungles of Vietnam, has this to say about Burns’ documentary. “Pretending to honor those who served while subtly and falsely subverting the reasons and justifications for that service is a con man’s game . . . From a cinematic perspective it will be exceptional. Burns knows how to make great scenes. But through the lens of history it appears to reinforce a highly skewed narrative and to be an attempt to ossify false cultural memory. The lies and fallacies will be by omission, not by overt falsehoods.”

I expect to see American virtue minimized, American missteps emphasized, to fit the left-leaning narrative about the Vietnam War that, to this day, prevents our country from learning the real lessons from that war.

When we came home from Vietnam, we thought the country had lost its mind. Wearing the uniform was for fools too dimwitted to escape service. Burning draft cards, protesting the war in ways that insulted our own troops was cool, as was fleeing to Canada.

America’s current turmoil reminds me of those days, since so many of American traditional values are being turned upside down. Even saying words defending free speech on a university campus feels completely absurd, but here we are.

So Ken Burns’ new documentary on the Vietnam War promises to solidify him as the documentary king, breathes new life into the anti-war message, and fits perfectly into the current practice of revising history to make us feel good.

Perhaps you will prove me wrong. Watch carefully, but I would advise a heavy dose of skepticism. I concur!

—————————————–

Terry Garlock lives in Peachtree City, GA. He was a Cobra helicopter gunship pilot in the Vietnam War.
 
Zeldman said:
Wow. I wonder how they explain why so many South Vietnamese escaped ahead of the final North Vietnamese invasion?
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They don't really address that. Many of the South Vietnamese that escaped after the war, however, were actually ethnic Chinese living mostly in Saigon. After the North took over, they were treated subclass citizens and were not able to attend secondary school. In fact, one of the reasons that the South Vietnamese were not receptive to communist rule was because of the large number of ethnic Chinese, who were displaced during Mao's regime. They didn't have kind things to say about communism.
 
I saw the first installment and was somewhat impressed. I hope Burns spends some time showing the substantial oil fields that were developed in the South China Sea during the 50's. Not many who served in Vietnam got to see the drilling operation but I did. No doubt the substantial reserves were the reason Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were leaned on so hard by big oil to get the US involved.
 
I was born in 1970, so I am too young to really have known what was going on at the time. I have had no formal education on the topic. My only knowledge is just what I have picked up over the years, and from watching the Discovery Channel. So, this should be interesting for me.

I watched last night's episode, "Deja Vu." (Spoiler Alert-- spoilers to follow. But this is all history, right?) It gave a lot of the back story about Viet Nam being a colonial territory of the French, and set up the Viet Cong (or Viet Mihn, as they were known at their inception.) Ken is setting the war up as being essentially an ironic struggle of the anti-colonial Viet Cong yearning for independence against the U.S., which should be sympathetic given its own revolutionary roots. My last statement may not be entirely fair to Ken. He does spend a lot of time discussing Ho Chi Min's history and connection to Marxism, and he does present the forces pushing on the U.S. to resist communist advances in Indochina, in light of the expansion of communism in Eastern Europe, Korea, and communist forces even within France. There is a remark from the French in the aftermath of WWII that without U.S. support of the French in Indochina they would probably have to just give in and join the Soviet Bloc. At least from last night's episode, it seems to give a pretty fair accounting of the motivations of the different sides and how they were drawn into a war in a territory that itself was not that meaningful. I am hoping that others who lived it will watch the documentary and then chime in here with their thoughts, and commentary. I think that could really enrich the experience of watching this documentary.
 
retpd2001 said:
I got this as a forwarded email today about being skeptical about the series. Just passing it on with no judgement attached:

Be skeptical of Ken Burns’ documentary: The Vietnam War

by Terry Garlock

Some months ago I and a dozen other local veterans attended a screening at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta – preview of a new documentary on The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The screening was a one hour summation of this 10-part documentary, 18 hours long.

The series will begin showing on PBS Sunday Sep 17, and with Burns’ renowned talent mixing photos, video clips and compelling mood music in documentary form, the series promises to be compelling to watch. That doesn’t mean it tells the truth.

For many years I have been presenting to high school classes a 90 minute session titled The Myths and Truths of the Vietnam War. One of my opening comments is, “The truth about Vietnam is bad enough without twisting it all out of shape with myths, half-truths and outright lies from the anti-war left.” The overall message to students is advising them to learn to think for themselves, be informed by reading one newspaper that leans left, one that leans right, and be skeptical of TV news.

Part of my presentation is showing them four iconic photos from Vietnam, aired publicly around the world countless times to portray America’s evil involvement in Vietnam. I tell the students “the rest of the story” excluded by the news media about each photo, then ask, “Wouldn’t you want the whole story before you decide for yourself what to think?”

One of those photos is the summary execution of a Viet Cong soldier in Saigon, capital city of South Vietnam, during the battles of the Tet Offensive in 1968. Our dishonorable enemy negotiated a cease-fire for that holiday then on that holiday attacked in about 100 places all over the country. Here’s what I tell students about the execution in the photo.



Enemy execution by South Vietnam’s Chief of National Police, 1968

“Before you decide what to think, here’s what the news media never told us. This enemy soldier had just been caught after he murdered a Saigon police officer, the officer’s wife, and the officer’s six children. The man pulling the trigger was Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s Chief of National Police. His actions were supported by South Vietnamese law, and by the Geneva Convention since he was an un-uniformed illegal combatant. Now, you might still be disgusted by the summary execution, but wouldn’t you want all the facts before you decide what to think?”

The other one-sided stories about iconic photos I use are a nine year old girl named Kim Phuc, running down a road after her clothes were burned off by a napalm bomb, a lady kneeling by the body of a student at Kent State University, and a helicopter on top of a building with too many evacuees trying to climb aboard. Each one had only the half of the story told by news media during the war, the half that supported the anti-war narrative.

Our group of vets left the Ken Burns documentary screening . . . disappointed. As one example, all four of the photos I use were shown, with only the anti-war narrative. Will the whole truth be told in the full 18 hours? I have my doubts but we’ll see.

On the drive home with Mike King, Bob Grove and Terry Ernst, Ernst asked the other three of us who had been in Vietnam, “How does it make you feel seeing those photos and videos?” I answered, “I just wish for once they would get it right.”

Will the full documentary show John Kerry’s covert meeting in Paris with the leadership of the Viet Cong while he was still an officer in the US Naval Reserve and a leader in the anti-war movement? Will it show how Watergate crippled the Republicans and swept Democrats into Congress in 1974, and their rapid defunding of South Vietnamese promised support after Americans had been gone from Vietnam two years? Will it show Congress violating America’s pledge to defend South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese ever broke their pledge to never attack the south? Will it portray America’s shame in letting our ally fall, the tens of thousands executed for working with Americans, the hundreds of thousands who perished fleeing in overpacked, rickety boats, the million or so sent to brutal re-education camps? Will it show the North Vietnamese victors bringing an influx from the north to take over South Vietnam’s businesses, the best jobs, farms, all the good housing, or committing the culturally ruthless sin of bulldozing grave monuments of the South Vietnamese?

Will Burns show how the North Vietnamese took the city of Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive, bringing lists of names of political leaders, business owners, doctors, nurses, teachers and other “enemies of the people,” and how they went from street to street, dragging people out of their homes, and that in the aftermath of the Battle of Hue, only when thousands of people were missing and the search began did they find the mass graves where they had been tied together and buried alive?

Will Burns show how America, after finally withdrawing from Vietnam and shamefully standing by while our ally was brutalized, did nothing while next door in Cambodia the Communists murdered two million of their own people as they tried to mimic Mao’s “worker paradise” in China?

Will Burns show how American troops conducted themselves with honor, skill and courage, never lost a major battle, and helped the South Vietnamese people in many ways like building roads and schools, digging wells, teaching improved farming methods and bringing medical care where it had never been seen before? Will he show that American war crimes, exaggerated by the left, were even more rare in Vietnam than in WWII? Will he show how a naïve young Jane Fonda betrayed her country with multiple radio broadcasts from North Vietnam, pleading with American troops to refuse their orders to fight, and calling American pilots and our President war criminals?

Color me doubtful about these and many other questions.

Being in a war doesn’t make anyone an expert on the geopolitical issues, it’s a bit like seeing history through a straw with your limited view. But my perspective has come from many years of reflection and absorbing a multitude of facts and opinions, because I was interested. My belief is that America’s involvement in Vietnam was a noble cause trying to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia, while it had spread its miserable oppression in Eastern Europe and was gaining traction in Central America, Africa and other places around the world. This noble cause was, indeed, screwed up to a fare-thee-well by the Pentagon and White House, which multiplied American casualties.

The tone of the screening was altogether different, that our part in the war was a sad mistake. It seemed like Burns and Novick took photos, video clips, artifacts and interviews from involved Americans, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, civilians from south and north, reporters and others, threw it all in a blender to puree into a new form of moral equivalence. Good for spreading a thin layer of blame and innocence, not so good for finding the truth.

John M. Del Vecchio, author of The 13th Valley, a book considered by many Vietnam vets to be the literary touchstone of how they served and suffered in the jungles of Vietnam, has this to say about Burns’ documentary. “Pretending to honor those who served while subtly and falsely subverting the reasons and justifications for that service is a con man’s game . . . From a cinematic perspective it will be exceptional. Burns knows how to make great scenes. But through the lens of history it appears to reinforce a highly skewed narrative and to be an attempt to ossify false cultural memory. The lies and fallacies will be by omission, not by overt falsehoods.”

I expect to see American virtue minimized, American missteps emphasized, to fit the left-leaning narrative about the Vietnam War that, to this day, prevents our country from learning the real lessons from that war.

When we came home from Vietnam, we thought the country had lost its mind. Wearing the uniform was for fools too dimwitted to escape service. Burning draft cards, protesting the war in ways that insulted our own troops was cool, as was fleeing to Canada.

America’s current turmoil reminds me of those days, since so many of American traditional values are being turned upside down. Even saying words defending free speech on a university campus feels completely absurd, but here we are.

So Ken Burns’ new documentary on the Vietnam War promises to solidify him as the documentary king, breathes new life into the anti-war message, and fits perfectly into the current practice of revising history to make us feel good.

Perhaps you will prove me wrong. Watch carefully, but I would advise a heavy dose of skepticism. I concur!

—————————————–

Terry Garlock lives in Peachtree City, GA. He was a Cobra helicopter gunship pilot in the Vietnam War.
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Maybe he should watch the series instead of a one hour "summation". That or make his own movie. I've found Burns/Novick approach to documentaries to be even handed. Having said that, if you want to hear how the US was blameless and always does the right thing, maybe this isn't for you. After all, they actually get views from both sides in the fight. Shocking.
 
What stuck out most to me were the comments of the old NVA dude at the beginning of the program. Basically said war is simple destruction and the only ones who actually care about winning or losing are those who have never engaged in combat. Very poignant commentary on the reality of war for the common soldier.
 
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Velocity173 said:
What stuck out most to me where the comments of the old NVA dude at the beginning of the program. Basically said war is simple destruction and the only ones who actually care about winning or losing are those who have never engaged in combat. Very poignant commentary on the reality of war for the common soldier.
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I caught that as well.
 
My biggest gripe about that war is the same issue I have with our current war. Limited effort trying to achieve a political outcome.

Either fight to win or don't fight.
 
Gen'rals gathered in their masses,
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction,
Sorcerer of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning,
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind,
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord yeah

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role for the poor, yeah
Time will tell on their power minds,
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah

Now in darkness world stops turning,
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pigs crawling,
Begging mercies for their sins
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings
Oh Lord yeah
 
I saw it, live, the first time, so I may pass on this "interpretation" of the facts
It was a mess, but it was the only war we had, so we made do.
And there were some kick a$$ airplanes, some really kick a$$ airplanes.
 
I mentioned to my wife last night that the gap between us and WWII was almost exactly the same as the gap between VN and our own kids.

My memories growing up of WWII were from friends and neighbors and their parents that had been there. My memories of VN growing up were that my dad and older siblings of my friends were there and we all followed what we could on TV. Now my kid's memories of WWII are books, TV, movies, and whatever they can get from the internet, and their memories of VN are from their grandfather and whatever I can share with them of what I grew up with.
 
PPC1052 said:
I was born in 1970, so I am too young to really have known what was going on at the time. I have had no formal education on the topic. My only knowledge is just what I have picked up over the years, and from watching the Discovery Channel. So, this should be interesting for me.

I watched last night's episode, "Deja Vu." (Spoiler Alert-- spoilers to follow. But this is all history, right?) It gave a lot of the back story about Viet Nam being a colonial territory of the French, and set up the Viet Cong (or Viet Mihn, as they were known at their inception.) Ken is setting the war up as being essentially an ironic struggle of the anti-colonial Viet Cong yearning for independence against the U.S., which should be sympathetic given its own revolutionary roots. My last statement may not be entirely fair to Ken. He does spend a lot of time discussing Ho Chi Min's history and connection to Marxism, and he does present the forces pushing on the U.S. to resist communist advances in Indochina, in light of the expansion of communism in Eastern Europe, Korea, and communist forces even within France. There is a remark from the French in the aftermath of WWII that without U.S. support of the French in Indochina they would probably have to just give in and join the Soviet Bloc. At least from last night's episode, it seems to give a pretty fair accounting of the motivations of the different sides and how they were drawn into a war in a territory that itself was not that meaningful. I am hoping that others who lived it will watch the documentary and then chime in here with their thoughts, and commentary. I think that could really enrich the experience of watching this documentary.
Click to expand...

Just to get the players straight, the Viet Minh were Northern Vietnamese that were formed in 1941 who were basically organized to fight the Japanese during the WWII occupation. After the war ended and the Japanese retreated, they formed the backbone of the resistance in the North when Ho Chi Minh went to war with the French in 1946. The Viet Cong were Southern Vietnamese guerrilla insurgents who initially countered the French, and later the US and Southern Vietnamese forces in support of the regular NVA. But they were completely separately formed and organized. It wasn't that the Viet Cong were fighting to gain independence of Southern Vietnam from the US, it was that they were aligned with the North in their objective of creating a unified Vietnam by invasion and takeover. Of note, the Viet Minh were actually given aid from the US during WWII for the purpose of countering the Japanese, so Ho Chi Minh probably actually had an expectation of help when he asked the US for it in 1945 to drive out the French when they returned to rule.

I think one of the biggest policy mistakes that the US made, given the objective of protecting South Vietnam from an invading North Vietnamese army, was to wait so long to get involved. After the victory over the French in Bien Din Phu in 1954, initially the Chinese for a short time and then the Soviets immediately went to arming the North Vietnamese, so they had nearly a ten year start in arming themselves before the US decision to become militarily involved. Had we done the same with the South, we could have largely stayed out of it just like the Soviets did, in terms of direct involvement.

If our objective had been to eliminate communism from Vietnam in it's entirety, we showed up more like 20 years too late for that party. That objective would have had to be achieved prior to 1954. I mean the French did ask for help, but our attitude was 'really sorry about the situation, France, but it's your problem plus we're a bit busy with Korea.'
 
Thanks for that. I obviously have a crap ton to still learn about the war.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Just to get the players straight, the Viet Minh were Northern Vietnamese that were formed in 1941 who were basically organized to fight the Japanese during the WWII occupation. After the war ended and the Japanese retreated, they formed the backbone of the resistance in the North when Ho Chi Minh went to war with the French in 1946. The Viet Cong were Southern Vietnamese guerrilla insurgents who initially countered the French, and later the US and Southern Vietnamese forces in support of the regular NVA. But they were completely separately formed and organized. It wasn't that the Viet Cong were fighting to gain independence of Southern Vietnam from the US, it was that they were aligned with the North in their objective of creating a unified Vietnam by invasion and takeover. Of note, the Viet Minh were actually given aid from the US during WWII for the purpose of countering the Japanese, so Ho Chi Minh probably actually had an expectation of help when he asked the US for it in 1945 to drive out the French when they returned to rule.

I think one of the biggest policy mistakes that the US made, given the objective of protecting South Vietnam from an invading North Vietnamese army, was to wait so long to get involved. After the victory over the French in Bien Din Phu in 1954, initially the Chinese for a short time and then the Soviets immediately went to arming the North Vietnamese, so they had nearly a ten year start in arming themselves before the US decision to become militarily involved. Had we done the same with the South, we could have largely stayed out of it just like the Soviets did, in terms of direct involvement.

If our objective had been to eliminate communism from Vietnam in it's entirety, we showed up more like 20 years too late for that party. That objective would have had to be achieved prior to 1954. I mean the French did ask for help, but our attitude was 'really sorry about the situation, France, but it's your problem plus we're a bit busy with Korea.'
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That sounds familiar, we pretty much did the same thing with the Taliban and ISIS.
 
I watched the first installment. Very well done. I think the thing to bear in mind is that the geopolitical lens often obscures the root causes of the conflict on the ground.
Sac Arrow said:
Just to get the players straight, the Viet Minh were Northern Vietnamese that were formed in 1941 who were basically organized to fight the Japanese during the WWII occupation. After the war ended and the Japanese retreated, they formed the backbone of the resistance in the North when Ho Chi Minh went to war with the French in 1946. The Viet Cong were Southern Vietnamese guerrilla insurgents who initially countered the French, and later the US and Southern Vietnamese forces in support of the regular NVA. But they were completely separately formed and organized. It wasn't that the Viet Cong were fighting to gain independence of Southern Vietnam from the US, it was that they were aligned with the North in their objective of creating a unified Vietnam by invasion and takeover. Of note, the Viet Minh were actually given aid from the US during WWII for the purpose of countering the Japanese, so Ho Chi Minh probably actually had an expectation of help when he asked the US for it in 1945 to drive out the French when they returned to rule.

I think one of the biggest policy mistakes that the US made, given the objective of protecting South Vietnam from an invading North Vietnamese army, was to wait so long to get involved. After the victory over the French in Bien Din Phu in 1954, initially the Chinese for a short time and then the Soviets immediately went to arming the North Vietnamese, so they had nearly a ten year start in arming themselves before the US decision to become militarily involved. Had we done the same with the South, we could have largely stayed out of it just like the Soviets did, in terms of direct involvement.

If our objective had been to eliminate communism from Vietnam in it's entirety, we showed up more like 20 years too late for that party. That objective would have had to be achi
eved prior to 1954. I mean the French did ask for help, but our attitude was 'really sorry about the situation, France, but it's your problem plus we're a bit busy with Korea.'
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Only fly in that ointment is that the South was as corrupt as corrupt can be, and would probably have been squandered much much like our support of the South Koreans, and , some might say, our attempt to stand up an Afghan force. And escalating to the point that would bring China into the conflict was unacceptable for too many reasons to list here. It was the threat of further Chinese involvement that brought the Korean truce. If you read the history of he Korean conflict, it was the Chinese that basically pushed us back when we got too close to their borders, and Gen. Mc Arthur got cocky after Inchon and started threatening to invade China.

The central lesson in my view is that our view through the lens of domestic and geopolitics distorts beyond recognition the events truly happening on the ground. At it's heart, Vietnam was about a colonized people throwing off the yokes of exploitation by a hated European occupier, France, which was our ally. Remember, the big finger pointing at this time was "Who lost China?", and no way could the political party in power suffer another such embarrassment.

No matter the cost.
 
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Chip Sylverne said:
I watched the first installment. Very well done. I think the thing to bear in mind is that the geopolitical lens often obscures the root causes of the conflict on the ground.


Only fly in that ointment is that the South was as corrupt as corrupt can be, and would probably have been squandered much much like our support of the South Koreans, and , some might say, our attempt to stand up an Afghan force. And escalating to the point that would bring China into the conflict was unacceptable for too many reasons to list here. It was the threat of further Chinese involvement that brought the Korean truce.

The central lesson in my view is that our view through the lens of domestic and geopolitics distorts beyond recognition the events truly happening on the ground. At it's heart, Vietnam was about a colonized people throwing off the yokes of exploitation by a hated European occupier, France, which was our ally. Remember, the big finger pointing at this time was "Who lost China?", and no way could the political party in power suffer another such embarrassment.
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This is very true, on both counts. Vietnam was a very corrupt country on both sides (still is by the way.) By all accounts, Ho Chi Minh was ruthless, and leaked the names of his detractors to the French, who did not leave the guillotine at home. He was able to address corruption.

We had superior mobility through helicopters. Better equipment. Dedicated soldiers. We owned the skies. But in the end, it was a ground war, and the NVA had the numbers and were willing to accept inhumane attrition ratios. We conducted bombing runs of the Ho Chi Minh trail, but they were fairly ineffective and it really needed to be controlled from the ground.

That's why I think, corruption aside, a larger, armed South Vietnamese force would have been more effective in that they would not have been subject to the same policy restrictions as the United States adhered to.
 
Diem proved to be more autocratic and ruthless as the fight against the North evolved. Had we armed him as you say, and allowed him to conduct the ground war as he wished, what then would we have accomplished, other than replace one bloody tyrant with another?
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Diem proved to be more autocratic and ruthless as the fight against the North evolved. Had we armed him as you say, and allowed him to conduct the ground war as he wished, what then would we have accomplished, other than replace one bloody tyrant with another?
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What we should have done, vs. what we did do, is a bit of an area of discussion. Twenty twenty hindsight says we should have stayed the hell out of it. That's my take. I had addressed what I think we should have done with respect to the assigned mission. I could be wrong. We will never know.

Don't discount bloody tyrants though. They get the job done.
 
Sac Arrow said:
We had superior mobility through helicopters. Better equipment. Dedicated soldiers. We owned the skies. But in the end, it was a ground war, and the NVA had the numbers and were willing to accept inhumane attrition ratios. We conducted bombing runs of the Ho Chi Minh trail, but they were fairly ineffective and it really needed to be controlled from the ground.
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" You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud. ”
― T.R. Fehrenbach
 
FDR said not to let the French back into Indochina. Damn was he ever right. Watching that was difficult, because I could see the tragedy unfolding.

And the same thing is happening today. Waging war in Afghanistan on behalf of a corrupt government to keep away today's bad guys, terrorists. Same song, different day. Hasn't occurred to anyone that Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires.
 
I've been waiting for the time period when my dad was there (66-67). I was 6-7 at that time. Probably will touch on that with tonight's episode. I was old enough to know he was "in the war" but not old enough to understand what was going on. As it went on, and I got older, I was more aware of both the war and the political and social changes going on around me. It was an interesting time to grow up.
 
Ken Burns has always done a remarkable job. I set the DVR for this series but I haven't watched any of it yet.

As for the VN war I find myself at odds in that we never, ever should have been there. Try to find the right words for "I love my country, but hate some of the things my country has done." Stop the spread of communism? Please. It was none of our concern. If we're going to be the world police force, there are much worse atrocities in plain sight that we ignore. But I don't think we need to be the world police force.

Like the Taliban, we loved Ho for a while too. But that's the bigger picture on the political stage.

There are thousands of books authored by those who served in VN. I'm sure I've read most of them and have a few hundred on my book shelves. Most are pretty good but it's tough to sort fact from BS in many of them. I've written many of the authors and have saved every response and I still have weekly contact with a few of the helicopter pilots who wrote of their time in country. Some will admit to embellishing their stories, others say it's 100% truth. One thing almost all of them have in common is that they agree they never should have been sent there. Therein lies a difficult thought - do you participate in a war you think is unjust? I think you do, but I'm usually wrong with things like that.

I respect those who protested. It showed people how strong the anti-VN war sentiment was. I have unending respect for those who served. I feel for those who were drafted and didn't want to go but were sent anyway. The world is a different place now. I remember in the first Gulf invasion we had a number of folks around here in the reserves who were sucking down the benefits, but when called for duty said they didn't agree with it and refused to report. I felt then, and I feel today, that they should have been deported to an uninhabited island and left for eternity. You don't sign up to serve when called, but only if you feel like it.

Ken Burns has always done exceptional work and I'm looking forward to watching the series. In the past he's laid out the facts in a way that appears unbiased but keeps the reader/viewer spellbound.
 
^^^

It's interesting to look backwards through 50+ years of history. The people making decisions at the time were in their own 40s and 50s and had been formed by their own experiences 20-30 years prior.
 
steingar said:
FDR said not to let the French back into Indochina. Damn was he ever right. Watching that was difficult, because I could see the tragedy unfolding.

And the same thing is happening today. Waging war in Afghanistan on behalf of a corrupt government to keep away today's bad guys, terrorists. Same song, different day. Hasn't occurred to anyone that Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires.
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I was thinking this to myself when I watched the first episode. How appropriate on so many levels is the title, "Deja Vu."
 
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