Ken Burns' new documentary: The Vietnam War

I have literally learned more about Vietnam and the events surrounding it from this documentary than in my 42 prior years on this earth.

 

I essentially loved reading your entire post, but this excerpted part particularly stuck out for me.

It had me think of one of the later episodes in which, during an interview, a US pilot who was part of the repeated bombing campaign of the Ho Chi Minh trail, stated that he started to develop admiration for the Viet Cong truck drivers he was charged with bombing and destroying. He said something to the effect that he knew just how corrupt the South Vietnamese government was and he wished he was fighting on the side of those dedicated to the suicide mission of driving the trucks.

I really don't know how you don't end up insane once your mind starts thinking like that.

 

while i have known for a long time how much of a huge mess vietnam was, this documentary has made me realize it was much worse than i ever imagined

 

That was, of course General Merrill McPeak, who was later the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1990s.

 

One of the early interview segments with Tim O’Brien from Minnesota was most poignant for me. Tim talks about how his parents were silent when he received his draft notice. He also talks about how instead of fighting it or taking a stand against the war he didn’t believe in, he acquiesced. This was a source of regret to him for the rest of his life. I can relate to this admission, as a person who often has taken the path of least resistance in my life, or came to decisions too late. He looked inside himself and realized some things he was not happy with. The film referenced the opinion by some at the time that those who fled to Canada to avoid going to Vietnam were cowards, and of course unpatriotic. I think Jim is admitting cowardice in not having been true to himself, not paying the price for resisting the war. There were also parents, of course, that supported their sons because they saw the danger and didn’t want to lose them. Though I missed the draft by a few months, I had been very worried about it. I was very much against the war and I was also afraid of it as I approached the age of 18. I would have liked it if my parents had expressed any concern as well. But they did not. They supported Nixon and the government, and the war generally, but they wouldn’t talk about it much, even though I’m sure they knew the about the horrific casualties, the deadly scenes on TV, and the potentially deadly danger to me if I were drafted. One time when I pressed my Dad for an opinion, he expressed his disdain for communists, who he said were all the same. It was bad government, he insisted, needed to be stopped because it was spreading like a disease, and that the only thing these people understood was the use of force. Therefore, we had to stop them by war. This came from a man who was a very gentle soul in his own personal life. Even though I had applied for conscientious objector status, and they knew it, they wouldn’t talk to me about it. I had been wondering if I could manage to escape to Canada, too. We were close by, living in Minnesota. I had relatives in Port Arthur, Ontario. Silence like a cancer grew, as the Simon & Garfunkel song said, in my family. The draft ended before I had to face the music.

 

Jessie Roy Lewis
Private First Class
CAP 1-3-10, CACO 1-3, 1ST CAG, COMBINED ACTION, III MAF
United States Marine Corps
Wichita, Kansas
December 12, 1950 to July 16, 1969​

Last night's episode struck me hard. Jay, Mike & Steve were all brothers of my classmates, graduated in 1969 from my HS & enlisted under the Marine Corps "Buddy" program. AFAIK, boot camp was the last point they had any "buddy" contact. Jay was a member of our state-winning 1 mile relay team, May 1969. The next-to-last time I saw him, at Steve's house, Jay picked me up by the shoulders & rubbed my hair on the ceiling. The next & last time, he was dressed in Marine Corps Dress Blues.

On October 15, 1969, I wore a black armband to school for the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. As I was opening my locker, someone pinched my upper arm to the bone. I heard my HS principal say we won't have that in my school.

The speaker for my 1971 commencement was Rep. Joe Skubitz (R). He told us "boys" that we had a great opportunity to enlist . . . .​

 

Wow....thanks for sharing this painful story.

 

today, at 4:00 pm, at our local school board meeting, a posthumous high school diploma will given to the mother of a former student who quit high school during his senior year, joined the marines, and was subsequently killed in vietnam in 1967.

it's sad that it took 50 years for this happen, but it is happening.

 

My parents were outspoken in their opposition to the war. They took me and my 3 brothers to an anti-war rally in '71 on Boston Common (I was 8 years old). No violence that I remember. My dad was a Korean War veteran (Navy, no combat) and he came out against the war in '68.

 

18 years old.

 

You can't have a long documentary done that way entirely as many are dead already, and you also need someone to tell the viewer about the history and all the ramifications of it.

 

Because they convey the period. Artistic license as they say.

 

A lady who wrote a New York Times letter to the editor a couple of weeks ago said that soldiers were provided empty AO canisters to use as makeshift bathtubs and her husband had contracted three types of cancer from the residue in them.

 

I find it relentlessly downbeat. Even 'The Civil War' doc isn't as grim considering
how horrible that war was.

 

Hunt, J. Edgar Hoover, and William Sullivan (FBI) have all corroborated LBJ's surveillance of the Goldwater campaign. Cartha D. DeLoach (FBI) provided the information about LBJ's surveillance of the 1968 Nixon campaign.

 

American network tv censorship is very strange. Show blood running out of corpses into the gutter? No problem. Dead babies? No problem. Country Joe dropping an F bomb? Woah there, that's obscene!

 

Because that war has been mythologized and romanticized for over a century and a half, whereas many people actually remember the Vietnam War.

 

I have heard some foul, perverse stuff on L&O:SVU / Criminal Minds reruns and the like at 3 in the afternoon that makes me wonder what kind of sick freak finds this crap entertaining on a weekly basis.

I have seen very real death and destruction (actual bombs blowing up real human beings) on the evening news at 6:30 PM.

But, a soft, warm, harmless boobie at 10 PM? WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN ?!?!?!

 

In 1971 I was in the fourth grade. This kid's parents came to school, came to the classroom & told him "Joey, you have to come with us, your brother's been killed in Vietnam." The mother was teary eyed, the father unemotional, I guess trying to be brave. I'll never forget the kid, he just sat there smiling at everyone.
I learned in later years that this kid's brother had just arrived in-country a few weeks before his death. He was assigned to an engineering unit and turned over his road grader, or some large piece of equipment. Just some stupid accident.

 

G

i was speaking of CIA involvement. To my knowledge only Hunt made that claim.

 

Pretty much everyone was wrong somewhere. Almost everyone lost. Reality. Can we do better by learning something? I still think communism is sick even if capitalism can be corrupted. I still think putting a dollar figure on everything, reducing things to a number on paper/screen is sick even while I can understand the appeal of promises that stand little chance of being partly fulfilled to desperate people made by doctrine absolutists. "'Twas ever thus?"

I thought the throwing of the medals over that daft wall was quite powerful. A bunch of junk compared to the price paid for it I suppose, and yet heavier and more precious than platinum for the price paid for it.

 

I think we are STILL in the "Love it or leave it" v "We have a right to protest and we love our country too" mode. (Hope that's not going to get me banned or close the thread! I've appreciated the comments).

Enjoyed the use of music in this episode.

That looked like a pretty straight-laced guy saying he had disrespectful loyalty.

Side note: Ex-coworker teaches at Kent State today. Says she enjoys the midwestern small town lifestyle. An unlikely place for history being made!

 

Who cares? I certainly don't. Their opinions are generally pretty 'low-value'
in my book (in...as you quaintly refer to it..."today's world").

 

Has Muhammad Ali's refusal to be inducted into the Army been mentioned at any point in the series yet? I don't think it has, unless I missed it somehow. I believe that happened in 1966, and we're well past that point chronologically now. After all I've seen to this point, my respect and admiration for the man and his courage is even greater than before.

 

Mind-boggling that Burns would miss the opportunity to highlight the Muhammad Ali affair. It's out of character for him (Burns, that is).