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Message
re: The Vietnam War (Ken Burns)
Posted on 9/20/17 at 10:33 am to Spaceman Spiff
Posted on 9/20/17 at 10:33 am to Spaceman Spiff
The lesson from Vietnam is this, if you go to war you commit and you go to war. You don't tie the military's hands with rules that the other side won't follow. Our military is trained to kill people and break stuff in order to win an objective. It's what they do and do very good. If our country won't commit to all out winning then we shouldn't be there.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 10:47 am to SoDakHawk
quote:
The lesson from Vietnam is this
We had no business being there in the first place. We played the role of the British in the American Revolution minus the fact that we didn't want to rule the country. We just didn't want that whole region to fall to communism. It was a royal frick up that we were there. Should have just let the French get their asses kicked.
The longer we stayed and interfered, the deeper we dug the hole.
You can plainly see history repeating itself with what is going on today.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 10:51 am to SoDakHawk
quote:
Our military is trained to kill people and break stuff in order
I mean, the military was doing plenty of killing and breaking in Vietnam.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 11:39 am to RealityTiger
quote:
We had no business being there in the first place.
I know plenty of soldiers who say otherwise. The thing is, the news (including burns and his severe political slant) never show the good. And that goes for today.
quote:
The longer we stayed and interfered, the deeper we dug the hole.
How so? Can't fight properly with our hands tied.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 11:44 am to Spaceman Spiff
quote:Oh really, well I know plenty who say that we should have never been there.
I know plenty of soldiers who say otherwise.
quote:You need to watch the documentary as opposed to simply saying that over and over again. Not that what you're saying is wrong. It's not a political slant. Quit being so bull headed and watch it to get the historical context of the timeline of events leading up to it and during it. He went out of his way to present all sides. He's going to win an Oscar for best documentary.
How so? Can't fight properly with our hands tied.
Quit being a turd and open your mind.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 11:51 am to Spaceman Spiff
quote:
including burns and his severe political slant
Through the 4 episodes I've watched, this has been a very fair presentation. He is presenting tons of primary sources.
This has probably been the easiest documentary Peter Coyote has ever had to narrate because of all the interviews that are being included.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 12:12 pm to GetCocky11
quote:
Through the 4 episodes I've watched, this has been a very fair presentation. He is presenting tons of primary sources.
I'm going to watch ep2 today. I like how you see the war from different points of views....us soldier, family of us soldier, nv soldier, south Vietnam soldiers, civilians, policitians, intelligence.
I'm viet American and watching the documentary hits me deep especially when you see kids and children as victims of war. Pictures of dead children, some little girl running naked crying.
I have experience in both cultures and it sucks for what the us soldiers were going too being put in a no win situation.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 12:19 pm to arktiger28
quote:Agreed. Slightly left bias in Nation Parks series. Larger bias in the Civil War series. Both were still great.
Despite his left leaning politics his documentaries are pretty straight forward.
Unfortunately, he's played it safe with the Vietnam War and hasn't been very honest. LINK (yea, it's HuffPo but still a good read)
From the start, Ken hasn't mentioned the true, original motives for the war. But it's going to be hard to have a big budget documentary on PBS talking about how Vietnam was a terrible decision and an immoral, no-win mistake.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 12:26 pm to Blue Velvet
quote:
From the start, Ken hasn't mentioned the true, original motives for the war. But it's going to be hard to have a big budget documentary on PBS talking about how Vietnam was a terrible decision and an immoral, no-win mistake.
Have you even watched any of the documentary?
Posted on 9/20/17 at 12:35 pm to ThatMakesSense
quote:Every second.
Have you even watched any of the documentary?
quote:
Despite the counter-cultural veneer, however, and admirable efforts to provide a Vietnamese perspective, Burns and Novick’s film in its first episode provides conventional analysis about the war’s outbreak and can be understood as a sophisticated exercise in empire denial.
The film is misleading at the outset in quoting an American soldier who recounts the pain of his homecoming, insinuating that veterans were maltreated in the United States – a trope often used to blame antiwar activists for creating this allegedly anti-veteran and divisive climate.
A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently claims that the Vietnam War was “started in good faith by decent men.”
However, the film goes on to recount a history in which the United States failed to allow for elections in the South after Vietnam had been divided following the French defeat at Dienbienphu. Everybody knew North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh would win the election, and so the United States set about building a client regime in the South which rigged a referendum and then massacred thousands of suspected communists.
These facts point to the United States violating the sovereignty of Vietnam and betraying the American mission of supporting democracy around the world.
After World War I, the Wilson administration refused to look at a petition by Ho Chi Minh advocating for Vietnam’s independence. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations subsequently provided extensive support in the 1st Indochina War (1946-1954) to the French who had presided over an oppressive colonial regime that exploited Vietnam’s economy and brutalized nationalist opponents.
This support was not made in good faith, but rather out of self-interested geopolitical calculation and prejudice.
Burns and Novick mislead viewers further by showing footage of North Vietnamese migrating to the South fleeing communist terror and interviewing a woman whose family fled while leaving out the fact that the CIA worked to sabotage North Vietnam’s economy, created a fake resistance movement and coerced many Catholics and others to flee by spreading false rumors about Vietminh atrocities and promising them 40 acres and a mule.
Burns and Novick depict the southern guerrilla movement as being controlled by the Hanoi Politburo when the National Liberation Front (NLF) was founded in direct response to the 10/59 law passed by South Vietnamese premier Ngo Dinh Diem that allowed for the execution of regime opponents after a military trial.
Burns and Novick also leave out some of the sinister aspects of nation building in the late 1950s, such as the police training program led by CIA advisers working under the cover of Michigan State University (MSU) who imported surveillance equipment and built up Diem’s secret police.
The film suggests that the U.S. was deceived by Diem who promoted undemocratic methods against Americans’ advice. However, MSU police adviser Arthur Brandstatter wrote to his colleague Ralph Turner that he supported Diem’s position regarding the role of the Civil Guard in “neutralizing VC activity” and “never agreed with the position that the Americans should try to help develop a democratic police force under conditions of instability and insurgency.”
These comments directly fly in the face of the film’s presentation.
According to Burns and Novick, the tragedy of the Vietnam War was a product of the political climate of the Cold War. The film makes a point of showing a map of the Soviet Union overrunning Eastern Europe and then attempting to do the same with Iran, Turkey and the Mediterranean, particularly in Greece.
This history is flawed, however, because in Greece it was the U.S. and UK that intervened militarily on behalf of royalist forces who had collaborated with the Nazis, while the Soviet Union maintained its pledge under the Yalta agreements not to back the left-wing rebels.
The USSR also only consolidated pro-communist regimes in Eastern Europe after the U.S. had implemented the Marshall Plan, interfered in election in Italy and infiltrated secret teams, led by ex-Nazi collaborators, to foment revolutions in Eastern Europe.
Burns and Novick quote Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and other proponents of the domino theory who feared that if Indochina fell, all of Southeast Asia would follow.
Left out, however, is how anticommunist fears were used to advance a larger imperialistic policy designed to consolidate a chain of military bases from Okinawa through the Ryukyu Islands, which were threatened by the communist revolutions.
Political analyst Noam Chomsky has explained that Vietnam was never going to invade any of its neighbors. The real fear of policy makers was that successful independent socialist development in Vietnam would serve as a model to other countries, including those with key strategic value such as Indonesia and Japan.
None of this is discussed in Burns and Novick’s documentary which relies on clips from policy-makers and commentary from old Cold Warriors mixed with a balance of Vietnamese voices who do not address the war’s imperialist underpinnings on the American side.
The implications are considerable in light of the fact that the United States has been constantly at war since the Vietnam War ended and continues to be deceptive about the motives underlying these wars.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 1:06 pm to Spaceman Spiff
It's history. We all saw Stripes.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 2:03 pm to Blue Velvet
Does he mention all the drug running that was going on? Drugs were being shipped in dead American soldier's caskets to America. Mainly heroin. They show that in American Gangster.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 2:27 pm to Spaceman Spiff
quote:
Once again, name one battle we were defeated in. Can't mark a loss due to objective. The war was lost by SVN because they couldn't/wouldn't stop the NV. We did. Every single time. The politicians sought a way out, which was started by the NV after Linebacker II...and the reasoning for that is NV was defenseless as a result.
Now, was the result wanted? No, but in now was the U.S. defeated or beaten. So don't pull that shite.
It was a political loss. War is politics. War is the continuation of politics by other means. We may have won the military battles. But we lost the objective, ergo, the war.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 4:02 pm to Othello
quote:
That's just not true about British colonies fairing better
Yes it is. India is light years ahead of their regional neighbors of Pakistan and Bangladesh, etc.
Now look at former French and Spanish colonies, like Haiti, Mali, Senegal, etc. They are dumpster fires in comparison to former British possessions, and that's not even looking at former British colonies like the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and other first world nations.
It goes back to each nations' aims for colonialism. France and Spain were far more likely to exploit the land and people for immediate economic gain, such as for gold, slaves or other natural resources. The British were no saints but they sought to develop the land through agriculture and tried (when feasible) to bring order, a coherent legal code, civil law and some degree of civilization.
There's a reason why India is the world's biggest democracy.
This post was edited on 9/20/17 at 4:03 pm
Posted on 9/20/17 at 4:23 pm to Othello
quote:
Does he mention all the drug running that was going on? Drugs were being shipped in dead American soldier's caskets to America. Mainly heroin. They show that in American Gangster.
There is a War on Drugs. Do you really expect a documentary on the Vietnam War to mention anything about that? Its not something he can easily prove. The CIA never admitted it. Its all allegations. We know we have troops guarding poppy plants in Afghanistan but the media isnt harping on it.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 4:26 pm to Spaceman Spiff
quote:
I know plenty of soldiers who say otherwise. The thing is, the news (including burns and his severe political slant) never show the good. And that goes for today.
maybe you should go watch First Blood Part II instead. It may be more suitable for your version of history.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 5:32 pm to saintsfan1977
Good point. I'm DVRing though and will watch soon. I have a strong interest in Vietnam and I really like a lot of his docs, especially his Jazz Doc. It's what made me a huge jazz fan after dismissing it for much of my life as atonal and weird. That's how I became a Charlie 'Yardbird' Parker, Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis fan and it just grew from there.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 5:58 pm to Othello
Jazz doc is life-changing good.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 8:42 pm to ClientNumber9
quote:
That's just not true about British colonies fairing better
quote:
Yes it is. India is light years ahead of their regional neighbors of Pakistan and Bangladesh, etc.
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were all British colonies as a single larger India.
Posted on 9/20/17 at 8:48 pm to SoDakHawk
quote:
The lesson from Vietnam is this,
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
(we tried not to)
With bombing the shite out of them forever but that didn't work so we had to go burrow them out of their holes and do search and destory.
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