It is an indication of the complexities of the Vietnam War that even after 18 hours of a detailed documentary that so many issues remain unresolved, and in fact so much of the history left untouched. Burns/Novick really glossed over the period of 1973 to 1975 and the collapse of South Vietnam. Also, there was practically no mention of the "Secret War" in Laos, which was related to Vietnam in essential ways. Neither was the role of Thailand, where nearly 50,000 Americans were based and a great portion of the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and North Vietnam took place from, covered. I should note I have noted these omissions in an earlier comment, however I think they are particularly relevant to this opinion piece.
2
The episodes of Burns-Novick "The Vietnam War" was beyond excellent. As most know, the word "war" was never used politically buy Johnson or Nixon. As for the Korean "War"..it was called the Korean Conflict.
Since only Congress can declare "war" per se, the Resolutions like the Gulf of Tonkin and the War on Terror resolution resulting the invasion of Iraq are now known and proven to false. And, what the cost!
Then unlike now...I repeat..unlike now..at least our leaders had some sense of judgment, logic and balance. The leader of the "free world" now leads by Twitter. So it goes!
10
Reviewing and seeing again the Living Room War in all its gruesomeness, stupidity, and uselessness will revive even more of the anti everything feelings from our vets and their families. The general malaise and negativity will leave behind a new ptsd among our voters that will be hard to predict, direct or treat. Already nearly 50% of our population has opted out of voting. More are expressing complete discuss with the process and its actors. Very little can be promised, even less delivered. Might as well watch TV or just go fishing...
1
Ken Burns usually lets those he interviews present their points of view. That there are at least two points of view is important to know.
Probably the Vietnam War was a mistake. God knows most wars are mistakes. To put it in its simplest terms, World War I came from misunderstandings among cousins and agreements among nations whose import had not been anticipated. It might be that we could have stopped Hitler the moment he gobbled up his first country. Perhaps Vietnam needed not to have happened. But happen they all did.
On the other hand, given the KGB's role in our late disastrous presidential election -- if nothing else -- it's too bad we couldn't have wiped Communism off the face of the earth.
"It's Putin, not Communism," a friend said to me.
Nonsense. They are one and the same.
1
Vietnam was a democrat war, started by Kennedy, expanded by Johnson and ended by Nixon.
1
Surely you jest. Find me 1 in one hundred "millennial" or "generation X" or whatever ridiculous term we used to describe America's younger people, find me ONE who can intelligently discuss the Vietnam War and what it said then and says now about our nation's foreign & military policies on the world stage. The ignorance of the masses is why the American government can pass trillion-dollar "defense" budgets and start up huge wars just as disastrous as Vietnam and get away with it. The public knows nor cares how monstrous & murderous & barbaric the United States has been for all the decades since the end of World War II in country after country, and dear old Ken Burns' efforts are not going to make a difference.
18
The Vietnam war came to an unsatisfactory conclusion? I don't think so. Vietnam was united, and the colonial regime that ruled it - including its heir, South Vietnam - was overthrown. One can quibble. The American Revolution resulted in the creation of a slaveholding state with a genocidal bent towards wiping out the first nations that occupied the continent, and one could call that an unsatisfactory conclusion - but that would not be generous.
7
I am for studying and learning from history. History that is thorough, honest, and complete. But there comes a time to say "OK this was wrong. Completely wrong and we need first to cement that learning into history.".
I am troubled that the truth of the Viet Nam war is being obscured by mountains of opinion and detail. It was wrong. Wrong in any way you can think about it. Wrong then, wrong now. Wrong in the beginning. Wrong in the midst and wrong at the end.
Fundamental lessons that should have been learned were not learned, perhaps due to the ongoing effort to complicate, to research and explain every little detail, every opinion, every testimony.
12
Burns points out the irrevocable fact; starting with Harry Truman's support of France's reinstallation of itself as colonial master of Vietnam, things went down hill. As a war thus begun it is not surprising that it ended poorly. The French experience had much to teach, but the US adamantly refused to reference it.
15
In the last episode an elderly former Viet Cong solder lamented the communal reorganization of farm on a "Stalinist" model after their victory, hinting to much disruption. Then a comment was made about "Viet Nam's Viet Nam " when they subsequently got bogged down in Cambodia in a proxy war of the Chinese/ Soviet ideological split with chaos on their border.
The apparent aftermath of our involvement - the implosion of Soviet Communism, ancient animosity toward China, the economic failure of Communism and Viet Nam's subsequent friendliness to the US and the West should have been in the last chapter. Burns and Novick didn't finish the story. Did we really lose?
4
Any documentary on Vietnam that doesn't mention the heroin trade is inherently drastically incomplete, at best. It was a proxy war, a war of post-nuclear "low intensity conflict", and our proxy armies were largely commanded by drug lords and fought by their servants.
2
I am a veteran of the war, and yes, I watched, most of it anyway. And I did learn quite a bit. Episode 1 really told me everything I needed to know. Wrong started in 1945. Yet, as far as a conversation or whatever, no. I didn't not know anybody, outside some of my vet friends, who watched it. Nobody cares.
3
It all started way back in 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson with prodding former war exceptionalist Theodore Roosevelt set into motion a series of events that subsequent Presidents found it difficult to reverse course and to this day we are paying consequences. Had Wilson stayed out and let the Central Powers and Triple Entente fight themselves to exhaustion without any help from the USA maybe some self determination in both the Far East and Middle East would have ocurred: Vietnam, Kurdistan, etc. But instead the greed of France and the Great Britain prevented it. The naivete of the United States let France carry on its revenge. Events are set into motion long before we realize. We paid for it. The wars of the 20th century are still being fought. What this series taught me was just how powerless the five Vietnam presidents were and the inexplicable fear of ideology in both domestic and foreign policy even to this day.
6
Burns and Novick have, without question, produced something that adds to and deepens our understanding of the Vietnam War. But a central question -- one which Burns/Novick probably didn't dare to touch lest they offend their corporate sponsors -- was the whole question of why, exactly, the so-called "Domino Theory" had been so compelling. Why did it matter so much if Vietnam were to be united under Communist rule? And so what if other Southeast Asian countries followed the same path?
ven if there had existed the "international Communist conspiracy" that had been conjured in the fevered brains of so many American leaders, why was that such an existential threat here in the U.S., where communist ideology had no significant foothold? Some would point to Soviet expansionism in the post-war period, but that was, for the most part, limited to states that bordered the Soviet Union. It can be argued that the Soviets were mostly concerned about creating a kind of buffer zone between themselves and the West, given that Russia had been invaded by Western forces four times in five generations.
The real, unspoken driver behind these concerns was, I believe, the fact that the demise of the old, colonial imperialist system presented a problem for the capitalist economies of the West, which require, just to maintain themselves, ever expanding markets and increasing access to natural resources. Left wing governments have a habit of doing things like nationalizing natural resources.
13
The overarching, inescapable fact that all US policy makers of all administrations failed to grasp was that first it was necessary to create a nation in the RVN (South Vietnam) accepted and supported by a large majority of the people before that nation could be defended. Even if the US would somehow had managed to win a military victory it would be a hollow one unless the people of South Vietnam demonstrated the ability and will to govern effectively. The RVN government and army simply could not overcome their own internal rivalries, chronic corruption and elitist attitudes towards many segments of the population to achieve any meaningful popular support.
11
What strikes me, during the watching of the documentary - is that we have with us now - the living history: the Vietnam Vets.
We also have the early Peace Corps volunteers from the 60s.
So forth.
These individuals, and their stories - are ripe - for development and presentation and discussion in the high schools, colleges and universities around the country.
I would think that any American history seminar, would be so enriched by engaging the stories of these men ( some women) while they remain in their youthful 70s.
6
The 1982 PBS documentary 'Television History of the Vietnam War' was not neutral. Its preponderance of fact over feeling & opinion, its strict adherence to historical evidence without cinematic gimmickry made it a valuable document for all time. Burns deviates from history and chases ratings over truth, aims for emotions over thought, uses generic footage that is not film of an operation or an individual under discussion in the narrative, in other words, his product is more mass-market movie than documentary.
13
Ending the Draft essentially ended young people's interest in their citizenry duty; allowing future military operations to occur with relative ease. I'm not recommending reinstating the military draft, but a mandatory National Service would certainly build a much needed, common American-ness.
41
You're partially right and woefully wrong. Yes, bring back the draft and make it exceedingly difficult to avoid, and yes, include some sort of alternative National Service, perhaps twice or three times as long as military service. Our all-volunteer army makes it possible to make mischief around the globe, now without even the consent of Congress. They are all volunteers, right, willing cannon fodder, so why not use them to spread our world-view? If they die, well, thank them for their service and recruit some more. Why should college attendance exempt one from serving? Or Kennedy fathers, who just happened to become fathers within a very narrow time period? If all Americans of draft age were subject to the worst impulses of politicians, to send America's best off to kill and die, perhaps more Americans would say "no" to "American exceptionalism," which is just manifest destiny by another name. The Vietnam War protesters brought the Johnson administration down and helped seal Nixon's doom. Without the draft none of that would have happened and perhaps we'd still be fighting in Vietnam, just as we are still fighting in Afghanistan. Remember how relatively silent the voice of protest became after Nixon ended the draft.
13
It is a mistake as most commenters on the Vietnam War make to date our involvement from the early sixties. Burns, to his credit devotes an episode to French colonial experience in Indochina and the August Revolution during which Vietnam declared its independence. To the Vietnamese we were no different from and no better than the French. Indeed, we financed the French war and aided its prosecution. We chose the wrong side and thus were wrong, and wrong headed, from well before most Americans think of as the beginning of our involvement. If the French colonial experience was taught in American schools, it would be difficult to not see in Vietnamese aspirations a desire to rid their country of colonialists and imperialists much like our own to rid colonial America of an overreaching colonial power. From 1945 on they were right and we were wrong, as a careful reading of history will attest. I served, and killed, in Vietnam, something I will regret until I go to my grave.
47
I was a draftee sent to Vietnam in 1968. We have never acknowledged that we LOST the war......that it was an exercise in stupidity and we certainly haven't learned a damn thing from the experience. The Burn's documentary just reinforced what I remembered as a complete waste of blood and treasure.....unspeakable death and destruction. We should be ashamed of ourselves as a country.....so much of our leadership at the time should have known better.
70
My sentiments exactly ! never thought it was a just or necessary war but supported the soldiers who were there by draft. We had no business being there as time has pointed out. Did we learn anything? Apparently the government didn't. It was a losing proposition from the start.
The rest of Southeast Asia was devastated by Pot Pol. What happened in Cambodia was another story that could be told.
3
The LBJ tapes reveal that president, his closest advisors (Bundy brothers, Rostow brothers, McNamara, Rusk) as extremely deceitful, to the point of sociopathic if not psychotic. The Trumpists have their precedents.
8
My lottery number was 113. The war, the draft, military service and all the potentially life altering possibilities associated with them were all too real...not just abstract considerations. The Burns-Novick documentary brought back a flood of memories, some good, some, not so much, but after watching all 10 episodes spread over 19 hours, I am dumbstruck by how little we seem to have learned.
54
US foreign policy since WWII has been created by the professional State Department bureaucrat career employees who are directed by the elite “DONOR CLASS” plus the various PAC (foreign and domestic) members who made campaign contributions sufficient to elect our “Established Mainstream Republican” and “Established Mainstream Democrat” officials, who created all of this “Politically Correct” US foreign policy and those limited wars since WWII that the USA fought to benefit the foreign nation PACs, MICs, and the other campaign contributors where the USA then tied or lost those wars.
These wars that the USA tied or lost since WWII have cost the USA thousands of US lives and created thousands of disabled veterans due to “Politically Correct” US military “Rules of Engagement,” and spent trillions of US taxpayer dollars which the US government borrowed to spend on these wars that BENEFITED NATIONS OTHER THAN THE USA, but did create MIC jobs for US citizens.
4
I thought "The Vietnam War" on PBS was terrific, and I am recommending it to all of my friends. As a child growing up during the war, I only understood there were strong feelings about the war among the adults. Ken Burns did a great job of showing the difficulties the soldiers the soldiers faced, and the view points of the pro and anti war activists at home.
Kennedy and Johnson both knew there was little chance of victory, yet they escalated the war. Johnson's 1965 speech showed why: They feared China expansionism in southeast Asia.
The anti-war protestors correctly said the war was immoral, but they did not argue the perceived threat from China was overblown.
In 1947, George Kennan, a highly respected diplomat and Russian expert, predicted that the dictatorship which quickly replaced communism would fall on its own, in the famous X document. He was proven correct in 1989.
9
I find it interesting that there are people on both sides of the war (those who thought it was justifiable and perhaps even winnable and those, like me, who thought we had no business intervening in another country’s civil war and who took to the streets to make their voices heard) who say they are disappointed that Burns didn’t do enough to support their particular interpretation. “I was hoping for an honest admission of the US' indisputable guilt in starting, waging and escalating this war - but found none of it” writes one person, while another writes “It just amplified the cacophony of opinions arising from the end if not the beginning of the War. A justified cause badly mangled by politicking, professional mishandling, military half steps and mishaps, hapless if not undermining ally. In all, I was reinforced in my opinion that the war was just, was not lost militarily but was surrendered politically.”
While Burns is by training and employment a film maker, I take this state of affairs as a measure of his success as a de facto historian. It’s not the historian’s task to sort the past into good guys and bad guys. I suspect Burns could have been an effective teacher had his career developed along slightly different lines.
9
The documentary is a cautionary lesson about the American involvement in the proxy war against Mao’s China and its collaborator North Vietnam.
Hopefully this lesson can be learned as the US is mulling its support of the corrupt and repressive communist Vietnam against Xi’s China.
2
I can't watch Ken Burns documentaries because I hate the narrator's voice. It maintains the same edge for countless hours and I find it grating and stressful. I have tried to watch these on public television many times and been forced to quit after a few minutes. Started with The Civil War. Each time I hope he'll find someone else but Mr. Coyote gets the job. Ugh.
1
Too bad you feel this way. Peter Coyote has, I think, a fine speaking voice. In any event, I wouldn't let his voice keep you from Burns's documentaries. Hey, I don't like Whoopie Goldberg's narrating of the planetarium show in New York City, but I'll take my grandnephew there anyway.
9
Actually, The Civil War was narrated by David McCullough. I know. I was one of its producers. Hats off to KLB and LN; this one is a masterpiece.
Have you tried tuning off the sound and turning on the captions? It works for me as I cannot stand the blaring music drowning out the narration which most TV documentaries seem to suffer from.
I think there's a lot of history between Detroit, Michigan and Russia then called the Soviet Union going back to the beginning of the 20th Century with the F.B.I. and J. Edgar Hoover and his investigations in the Detroit area. I wouldn't be surprised that had an effect on the 1967 Detroit Riot and the City of Detroit and it's leaders going as far up as the Governor of Michigan George W. Romney.
If you notice in Episode 3 "The River Styx" of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick "The Vietnam War" Documentary. There's a black and white photo of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and J. Edgar Hoover. I only thought back then the F.B.I. was only a Domestic Law Enforcement Agency, Unlike the C.I.A. being an International Law Enforcement Agency.
After reading a NYTimes article online "‘Revolution? What Revolution?’ Russia Asks 100 Years Later"
"By NEIL MacFARQUHAR MARCH 10, 2017" at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/world/europe/russian-revolution-100-y...
"“Vladimir Putin cannot compare himself to Nicholas II, nor to Lenin nor to Kerensky, because that is not Russian history to be proud of,” said Mikhail Zygar, a Russian journalist and the author of a best-selling book, “All the Kremlin’s Men,” which details the inner workings of the Putin government. “In terms of 1917, nothing can be used as a propaganda tool.”"
3
Beyond artistic product, I believe Nocick and Burns were deicated to the idea of the series as a healing instrument. The series is a plea for understanding by both sides, in what remainsI still have trouble forgiving those who prose a bitter and divisive issue in the American psyche.
4
A history of X depends on what you want to know about X. What questions you are asking, what you think you already know and would like to have verified or challenged, what scope of interest you have -- the nature of battles and strategy or the economic and social causes, contexts, and effects, the structure of the political class involved in the decision making, etc. For Vietnam, and now for our current wars, in a democracy a big question besides these is about the nature of public awareness, support, dissent, etc. and its relation to education, the media, etc. Burns raised some of these but didn't do much with them -- why are people so eager to demonize socialism and communism when they know so little about these political ideologies? Why are foreign leaders so demonized, when we know so little about them too? How are citizens so easily manipulated (Hillary as an anti-Christ figure for many)? Burns and Novick are good at pulling emotional strings --but not very good at clarifying these issues, and in fact are part of the problem.
3
LET US HOPE That the Ken Burns effect will kindle much interest among the new generations born to the children and grandchildren of the Boomers. Will they learn to make war no more? Will they beat the swords into plowshares? The answer is blowing in the wind. A new wind. A wind scented liberally with the smoke of legalized recreational marijuana and legalized medical marijuana. Light up, tune in and remember that the Answer is Blowin in the Wind!
2
Burns/Novak open the series with Max Cleland, a Vietnam Vet triple amputee, quoting Frankle / Nietzsche, “To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
The series brilliantly explores how “meaning” has evolved over the past 50 years for participants. We are introduced to individuals representing an Advisor, Army, Air Force, Marine, Navy, CIA, Protestor, a Gold Star Mother, a sister, South Vietnamese regular army, North Vietnamese regular army, and Viet Cong, among others. Over the series’ 10 episodes, we get to know each and recoil as these story lines tragically intertwine in the unfolding conflict.
At pivotal moments in the series, we also hear tape recordings of our top political leadership spanning at least three administrations, from both political parties alternatively bearing their souls and then resolving to muddle through to a politically-acceptable end. While these revelations are breath-taking, what lingers with me most two weeks later is the stories of those on the ground, both there and back home, struggling to make meaning… it is those stories which give the series its most compelling force.
I sincerely hope authors Wiest/Ural are correct in their premise that the series will awaken an awareness and a rethinking of that tumultuous time in our country’s history. “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” And, as we all know, the culture war continues…
10
As usual from our founders forward we sided with the suppression of the indigenous population who gave Ho approximately 80 per cent support due to his long war against the colonist, first French, then Japanese, then the French again, culminating in the the US occupation and indiscriminate killing of the civilian population. For all of our propaganda about exporting freedom and democracy we have repeatedly sided with the dictators and tyrants who let out large companies extracted the local's resources.
Viet Nam was a war of choice which we could not win unless we killed every Vietnamese, except those on our payroll.
us army 1069-1971/california jd
25
Wars, rationale and outcome, are the sum of all their parts -- known and the unknown. Today, as we read these comments, the United States and its vast military-industrial complex-conspiracy are involved in known and unknown conflicts in many regions. Those of us who remember World War Two as what Studs Terkel called "The Good War" have lived through subsequent conflicts with conflicted feelings, conflicted understandings.
Surely by now we know how easily hypocritical, hubris-infected politicians take advantage of war making and how easy stepping into another "Big Muddy" becomes with fortunes spent, lives ruined and lost. The suicide rate among our veterans is a potent message seldom analyzed. What we don't want to know leads to propaganda's success and the knee-jerk patriotic march into yet more carnage. Today, as we read this, President Trump is banging a Tweeterpated drum for war with North Korea, and at the same time officials and the nation are wondering what motivated Las Vegas murderer Stephen Paddock descent into madness. War, too, is a descent into madness, and its causes, its motivations, its demand to be waged are in many ways as unfathomable as the singular madness of Stephen Paddock. However, in both instances, we know quite well what the outcome will be in lives ruined and lost, in financial cost -- followed by writers' attempts to understand and reveal what happened. The Vietnam era asked "When will they ever learn?" Answer: Never.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, MT
28
Sorry, but no such thing as "The Good War."
Read a summary, verbatim, without comment, of statements by most of the major figures, before, during, and after the war and then tell me if it was "Good"--HUMAN SMOKE, by Nicholson Baker.
1
While "The Vietnam War" covered a lot of new material it left out many of the military operations, some of which the authors mentioned. There was an emphasis on the battles in the north and the ones in the south got shortchanged. The Iron Triangle, the Cu Chi tunnels, the Cambodian invasion at Parrot's Beak and the Fishhook, the river patrol boats, the battles for control of Nui Ba Den, and all of the special forces mercenary armies got either neglected or were not covered at all. For those of us who fought in those battles it was disappointing to be so forgotten and overlooked. From the perspective of military history the question of the significance of those battles and the tactics employed is definitely worth exploring.
17
It wasn't about battle or tactics or anything else you were obviously after. There is already plenty of that. This is selected stories - personal stories. That's the format and it's well explained why elsewhere but I think you've already made up your mind.
6
Made up my mind about what? All I said was that the Burns documentary covered a limited scope of the war and there is a lot of room for more investigation.
6
The strengths of the Burns/Novak documentary is it's depth and breadth. There are many great interviews, footage, and ample description of context for people to conclude their own meaning from the conflict. Contrary to 'patriots' who assume that this documentary will be a liberal diatribe, I think the producers were quite restrained with assigning meaning to the war.
Perhaps connected to the above paragraph, I found the absence of more opinion about the 'why' interesting. There are no historians opining about 'why' and 'what this meant for blank' which leaves the viewer to decide. This is distinct from Burns' Civil War documentary and, I think, reflects the artistic and epistemological sensibilities of 20teens rather than the late 1980s.
16
This essay suggests that the Vietnam War would have been a positive piece of American history had the United States established a bigger, heavier bootprint on the Korean Peninsula at its conclusion. Given what that would have meant in terms of ongoing military escalation with China and the Soviet Union, that is a problematic argument from the start.
Ken Burns' latest work could have been made more relevant had it not glossed over the systematic crimes against humanity carried out for years by the Phoenix Program. Recently released CIA documents show that tens of thousands of civilians were tortured, many of them murdered, and some of them subjected to brutal nazi-esque experiments. All the while, the CIA calculated that almost none of the Vietnamese people it victimized were associated with the armies the United States was fighting.
The parallels to the torture programs and black sites the CIA established under the George W. Bush administration (the subject of a powerful expose in today's Guardian newspaper, by the way) are important and unmistakable. With a president who has lauded torture and abuse as a way to win wars and control riotous behavior at home, it is a lesson from Vietnam that would do well to heed.
Whether or not the United States prevails in a military venture, moral defeat and a shame so ugly it is difficult to look at are certain consequences of engaging in war crimes against helpless civilians. When we go down that path, we have made ourselves losers.
31
You cite Britain's involvement in World War I as a backdrop to the historical discussion of the Vietnam War. I am curious about your thoughts of the other major war, World War II. Is the historical perspective of our involvement lacking like that of Britain's involvement in World War I?
The 50,000+ (about) pointless American dead because of Vietnam can't care about historical reasons.
History may matter to people in arm chairs watching a documentary, but then so what?
3
Czechoslovakia.
WWII in Europe happened because the Germans under Hitler were allowed to get away with one thing after another, including the takeover of Czechoslovakia. Had France and GB stopped the Germans then, no WWII. My father, who fought in WWII, was a great believer in this.
Also, in WWII there was a single nation and ideology, fascism/Nazism, rolling over Europe one nation at a time. Then after the war, Stalin took over his side of Central Europe, including Poland. It was agreed to in Yalta by Churchill, who basically traded Poland for Greece, and a dying FDR. The Truman administration adopted the theory of containment - allow "Communism" to remain behind the Iron Curtain but don't let it expand.
When China "fell" to Communism in 1948, everyone became afraid of the repercussions. Nobody among the governing elites understood that the old empires were breaking up. They only saw two worlds - the West and the "Communist."
The real problem was with the word "Communist." Everyone assumed all Communist countries were alike and took their orders from Moscow. This belief in "monolithic Communism" (which could be compared to beliefs in "monolithic Islamism" today), coupled with memories of how Hitler conquered Europe, led to the "domino theory," a kind of containment theory for Southeast Asia (tho the author of containment protested it wasn't the same). Which meant we had to "rescue" Vietnam.
So the ghost of WWII did haunt the decisions made in Vietnam.
20
I watched it with hope to have all the questions you have here answered...
The well done new film didn't do it for me... It just amplified the cacophony of opinions arising from the end if not the beginning of the War...
A justified cause badly mangled by politicking, professional mishandling, military half steps and mishaps, hapless if not undermining ally...
In all, I was reinforced in my opinion that the war was just, was not lost militarily but was surrendered politically...
If we could've only saved the many of the lives of the young we send there who had not returned unhurt...
The ghost of that War is still gonna be here... the film just raised it from back burner simmer to front for a week or two of it's run...
3
In retrospect it seems the Vietnamese faced a choice between an anti-colonial and theoretically egalitarian government with a heavy dose of authoritarianism and a government plagued by ongoing corruption. The former won out, but, as Burns shows, the country is still far from unified. We now have relations with Vietnam and the chance to acquire a greater understanding of their society, something that was lacking perhaps as a result of key Asian experts being ousted from our government during the McCarthy era. I truly hope our present engagement with Vietnam can be mutually beneficial, notwithstanding the unfortunate reduction of personnel in our state department.
2
The documentary does show that we may have been on the wrong side, how violence in America against antiwar protesters escalated (and mirrored violence in Vietnam), and how the war was continued for several years for political reasons.
The film was very good at humanizing the Vietnamese and showing the popularity of Ho Chi Minh. I and most Americans know little about the Vietnamese.
The series lacked historian's explaining these themes like David McCullough and Shelby Foote explained the Civil War.
I find the escalation in violence and rhetoric similar to what we see today. Trumps attacks on kneeling football players reminds me of Nixon's attacks on protesters. They are tearing this nation apart.
45
I watched the series and I am terribly disappointed. I was hoping for an honest admission of the US' indisputable guilt in starting, waging and escalating this war - but found none of it.
Atrocities are glossed over, as 'incidents' with plenty of explanation of how innocent (American) young souls can break under pressure.
Not a word about what kept the Vietnamese going and making all the sacrifices to liberate THEIR country from an uninvited invader.
Post-Vietnam generations deserve an honest, factual record of what exactly has taken place and face their demons, just as the Germans were forced to do after WWII.
It's high time.
13
Are you sure you watched this documentary? There were numerous times in which the responsibility of the US in "starting, waging, and escalating this war" was made crystal clear. Maybe you just wanted it to be a documentary of all the US atrocities-- is that it? The North Vietnamese were all angels and the South Vietnamese and the Americans were all devils. That might satisfy you, but it would not give accurate picture of what really happened. Please give examples where this film was dishonest and did not reflect the facts.
11
History, as opposed to mere chronology, begins when a historian formulates a question she wants answered. The question usually reflects the vital concerns of the historian’s own time. Since we cannot predict the future, we cannot predict what the vital concerns of future historians will be and the questions they might ask. Who can say for certain whether there will be an intense interest in the Vietnam War or none at all and what questions future historians might ask of the war? To repeat, it is these question that determine how history is written. Paradoxically as it may sound, the past is exactly as uncertain as the future.
3
My historical research into war in Vietnam darkly began where it needed to: in my own motives and susceptibility to suggestion, an investigation into my own psychology and by association necessarily human psychology. To understand why, I needed to understand how.
I've been counseled that I was 19, that I was by nature vulnerable to nationalism, patriotism and duty, honor, country. But is that so? Is the excuse of the human race always to be that we send young people to war because they'll go to war? If it is, war is ceaseless. The human race is caught in a futile, endless cycle of violent destruction of each other.
Are we to be a hell acting out war from generation to generation to generation? Then our species is a caricature of itself, meaninglessly caught in a universal tragi-drama acted out time after time after time, layer on layer, a living representation of Dante's "Inferno" levels of hell.
Before the reader plows into the next work on Vietnam I suggest you start with two works figuratively produced in the years of that war, Ernest Becker's "The Birth and Death of Meaning" (1st published in 1961, heavily revised 2nd edition 1971) and "The Denial of Death" (Pulitzer prize winner 1974, awarded posthumously).
If you don't try to achieve and remain open to an objective understanding of human individuality and by association our societies, religions, cultures and politics you'll not understand Vietnam.
As one broken by that war I believe I know of what I speak.
38
I thought that earlier PBS documentary on the Vietnam was also well done, as they were able to include interviews of some of the governments officials. The Thames Television 'World at War' is in my opinion still unsurpassed in that respect.
4
For me the key question is what prevented the South Vietnamese government from prevailing in this war. It was certainly a civil war, but the South had the full assistance of the most powerful and wealthy country on earth. It had this assistance for many years before public opinion in the U.S. began to turn against the war.
6
Corruption.
13
The Viet Cong force came from the countryside. They effectively controlled it by terrorizing the peasant population into submission.
In cities of South Vietnam the only Americans most average urban Vietnamese encountered were those in either luxurious and secured compounds or in the most seedy parts of towns where many bars and night clubs were located, hence the image problems of westerners in Vietnam in particular and Asia in general.
My personal childhood memories of Americans in South Vietnam were those high-spirited, loud, and “crazy” young American soldiers piling up in open top Jeeps playfully speeding down the small streets of a peaceful and quiet town with total disregard to local pedestrians, and inhabitants.
Hollywood action movies in South Vietnam at the time enhanced the caricature of the “decadent”, “sinful”, and “evil” America. That didn’t help its alliance with South Vietnam.
South Vietnam was just barely leaving its feudal/imperial past behind and was experimenting with the democracy through trials and errors. The democratic experience in South Vietnam was an on going work-in-progress and many mistakes were made.
Geographically South Vietnam didn’t have a chance being surrounded by Mao’s China and North Vietnam in the North, Pathet Laos and Khmer Rouge in the West, and the destabilizing Viet Cong in the South.
4
Interesting comparison between Britain's role in World War I and America's in Vietnam. But we should remember that Vietnam was, at bottom, a war of choice, whereas in 1914 Britain really had no choice but to intervene; failure to do so would've meant a German-dominated Europe, which Britain was not prepared to accept without a fight. You also grossly exaggerate the role of Prior and Wilson in the rethinking of Britain's war; other scholars had begun moving the debate in the 1980s.
Clearly the US was not simply a good actor trying to preserve and protect the "freedom" of the South Vietnamese; we've known that since the Pentagon Papers. Westmoreland was a mediocre commander who didn't really understand the war he was being allowed to fight. On the other hand, had be been allowed to occupy southern Laos in the spring of 1967, it would not have been possible for the NVA/Vietcong to win the war or even mount an operation the size of Tet, simply for logistical reasons. That probably would not have made South Vietnam a viable country over the long term, but it would have prevented the communist takeover that eventually occurred in 1975. Perhaps the fall of communism in 1989-91 would then have led to more peaceful reunification of Vietnam, with far less bloodshed and persecution than occurred in the 1970s.
6
As a young man in the '60s I thought the Vietnam Cong cowardly for "fighting dirty" - using punji sticks, hiding in holes and not wearing uniforms. Years later I realized we did similarly in our Revolution; we hid and blended in with the landscape while the Redcoats marched abreast wearing theirs.
In Vietnam, the enemy had no all-powerful Army, Navy or Air Force dropping bombs and napalm around the clock. Lead by the "Best and the Brightest" we
made the most tragic of mistakes born of hubris - that Might makes Right; that we could force democracy on others.
The Ken Burns Documentary was and is the most visceral, powerful, revealing and informative I've ever experienced. Watching it through the eyes of both sides was immeasurably poignant and moving - the indescribable loss of life and innocence for both America and Vietnam.
It should be required viewing - all ten episodes continuous - for every government official in the chain of command for any future military involvement by this country.
86
Have not watched a minute -- trying to fix today's problems are sufficiently painful. JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Kissinger, Ho, Mao, Russian Communists, the Diems -- macho, ego, need for power to a point of insanity.
"Won't be fooled again" -- Pete Townsend had it right.
I don't need Burns to interpret this war for me.
It was a part of my life. I can't imagine Burns adding anything I don't know. In fact, I am confident that I speak for many who also know more than he does.
Worse, the pointless dead aren't here to care.
12
understood David.....but the rest of the country needs to know. That's the problem with this country and its thorny issues.....no one knows the whole truth and nothing but the truth about anything. they only know what suits them....what sounds noble and heroic and patriotic, and admirable. They don't want to know the get down and dirty....the truths, the half-truths, the untruths, and the flat out lies, misrepresentations and blatant omissions. We need Ken Burn to tell the WHOLE truth, with all its dirtiness, and inhumanity. That's all part of what got us here in the state we are in today. Its easy to believe our past leaders were god-like. It's hard to face an embarrassing truth that none of them were without some major and unsavory faults that contributed to the vicious side of how this country came to be. It never was a pretty sight.
46
That's what I thought too, until
I read "Unspeakable" by James Douglas. Even just reading the "afterword" and Appendix makes clear - as previously classified documents now released demonstrate - that there was much MUCH more going on than eve then most alert and astute knew.
6
Very hard to believe that nothing in those 10 episodes covering the history of Vietnam from 19th century colonialism to today would represent news to you.
13
I think that once people who were adults during the war years are not writing the history, the story will change.
Personal beliefs about the Vietnam war were seared into your mind during that time. I know that my thoughts have not really changed all that much since that time. A terrible waste that could / should have been avoided.
37
On one of my assignments in 1969 I visited a power plant that the French had started but never completed. While there I was speaking with the plant general manager who pointed out the minerals that were known to exist in the surrounding mountains of An Hoa. That was the reason we were there. Certainly not the rice.
15
Not just minerals Ken Foley, but George Kennan's policy of containment influenced Truman to resist North Korea's invasion of South Korea, and this zero sum policy evolved by the 1950s into the domino theory , ie if South Vietnam were to fall , communism would spread from there to the rest of South East Asia, the Philippines and eventually to our ally, Japan. Did Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson believe the domino theory? Perhaps.