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Started By
Message
re: The Vietnam War (Ken Burns)
Posted on 9/24/17 at 2:13 pm to Spaceman Spiff
Posted on 9/24/17 at 2:13 pm to Spaceman Spiff
(no message)
This post was edited on 9/24/17 at 4:06 pm
1
Posted on 9/24/17 at 9:08 pm to Blue Velvet
frick the VC. frick those goddamned animala.
Posted on 9/24/17 at 9:12 pm to ThatMakesSense
Burns is doing a fantastic job on this.
Posted on 9/24/17 at 10:09 pm to udtiger
Very well done. Recommending this to everyone.
Posted on 9/24/17 at 11:01 pm to Drank
Loan gained international attention when he executed handcuffed prisoner Nguyn Van Lém, a Viet Cong member.
What the documentary doesn't explain or even attempt to explain is this:
Around 4:30 A.M., Lém led a sabotage unit along with Viet Cong tanks to attack the Armor Camp in Go Vap. After communist troops took control of the base, Lém arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Lém killed Tuan, his wife and six children and his 80-year-old mother by cutting their throats.
Lém was captured near a mass grave with 34 civilian bodies. Lém admitted that he was proud to carry out his unit leader's order to kill these people.
Having personally witnessed the murder of one of his officers along with that man's wife and three small children in cold blood when Lém was captured and brought to him, General Loan summarily executed him using his sidearm, a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Model 38 "Bodyguard" revolver, in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC News television cameraman Võ S?u.
The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement.
The Doc acts like he was just some random VC guy. The Doc plays this up for propaganda just like the newspapers did in the 1960's.
This post was edited on 9/24/17 at 11:05 pm
Posted on 9/25/17 at 8:36 am to E12IC
quote:
booby-trapped the bodies.
Americans did that as well fwiw. At least the ones who were utilizing the same guerrilla tactics employed by the VC.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 8:45 am to Spaceman Spiff
quote:
No, twatwaffle, it's the making us feel bad for the NVA and such. It's entirely possible to make a historical documentary without his liberal bullshite spin. Alert us the show the cong mutilating and beating Americans. Or the rape/murder/torture of villagers by the cong. Typical left spun bullshite as before. This guy is a fricking tool.
Run along back to the poli board you fricking retard. I've only watched the first episode so far but I can remember them specifically talking about Viet Minh and VC atrocities.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 8:48 am to mizzoubuckeyeiowa
Loan was miscast as the villain, you are right the guy shot had murdered a whole family. I think the series has been really good and this was the one point were I think Burns dropped the ball. There is no doubt Lem being shot was a turning point and powerful propaganda but it also is more. Burns could have used this incident to show the futility of the whole war. A murdering SOB is executed and the Viet Cong becomes some kind of weird martyr.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 10:24 am to udtiger
Took this from another board:
who is an author & former F-4 driver who served there:
Be skeptical of Ken Burns’ documentary: The Vietnam War
by Terry Garlock
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.
LINK
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.
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!
who is an author & former F-4 driver who served there:
Be skeptical of Ken Burns’ documentary: The Vietnam War
by Terry Garlock
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.
LINK
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.
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!
Posted on 9/25/17 at 11:35 am to Spaceman Spiff
quote:
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?
Did exactly that in last night's episode. Besides the picture of the VC getting shot in Saigon the dhow has been very good. And yes he has interviews with NVA & VC which he should. The war was a clusterfrick from the start and all sides and aspects should be looked at in something as comprehensive as a 20 hour documentary.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 11:48 am to Tackle74
The episode I watched ast night didn't seem to be whitewashing the Vietnam Cong or the North Vietnam Army at all.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 12:19 pm to Spaceman Spiff
Posted on 9/25/17 at 3:01 pm to mizzoubuckeyeiowa
If I remember correctly, I believe when they interviewed Abrams years later, he said that he had no problem with what the general did given the circumstances and what they had just been through
Posted on 9/25/17 at 3:31 pm to Spaceman Spiff
The war could have been won in 1968 straight up after the US and the ARVN crushed the Tet Offensive by April and the mini offensive after that. By Mid 1968 the Cong was done as a fighting force and the NVA was licking its wounds. If Johnson had continued the heavy aerial bombardment in and around Hanoi and Haiphong, the North would have had no choice but to capitulate...in the end it was Johnson who blinked.
Look, Vietnam was a crappy war, in a crappy place run in a crap arse manner by the higher ups
Look, Vietnam was a crappy war, in a crappy place run in a crap arse manner by the higher ups
Posted on 9/25/17 at 3:40 pm to KiwiHead
quote:What goal would they have been successful in accomplishing?
war could have been won in 1968
Posted on 9/25/17 at 4:32 pm to Blue Velvet
quote:
What goal would they have been successful in accomplishing?
They would have decimated the Command and Control structure in Hanoi and forced the North to actually sue for peace instead of the other way around....Once the US plead for negotiations in Paris, the North had the upper hand and if you have the upperhand against a big power like the US, if I'm Le Duan I would do exactly what I did. But if the US had continued the bombing in and around Hanoi like it had been doing and as Nixon did later on in 1968 things probably would have been different.....
Always tough playing the what ifs
Posted on 9/25/17 at 5:28 pm to KiwiHead
Just finished it. Great doc.
The McNamara stuff was really interesting. Smart man.
They also hammered home the part where Nixon didn't want Saigon to fall before his re-election bid in '72.
The most powerful moments to me was the story of Hal Kushner coming home and the memorial in DC.
I need to watch The War and Jazz next. Then Baseball.
The McNamara stuff was really interesting. Smart man.
They also hammered home the part where Nixon didn't want Saigon to fall before his re-election bid in '72.
The most powerful moments to me was the story of Hal Kushner coming home and the memorial in DC.
I need to watch The War and Jazz next. Then Baseball.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 6:26 pm to Tackle74
quote:I missed some of the episodes but this brings back many memories of the sixties. Different times to be living in, for sure.
think the series has been really good
Posted on 9/25/17 at 7:02 pm to bobbyleewilliams
The Tet Offensive episode was very intense. Both sides seemed extremely bothered talking about it.
Posted on 9/25/17 at 7:59 pm to KiwiHead
quote:
The war could have been won in 1968
McNamara was right in 64-65 that the war was unwinnable in a traditional sense. The Vietnamese wanted to be united and they would not have just given up. We were just like the Chinese and every other Empire that had invaded them. The resistance would have continued minus the nuclear option which was no option in the Nam.
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