Ken Burns' new documentary: The Vietnam War

I had a medical deferment, due to a childhood accident that left me with metal pins holding my hip together. There was zero chance I would be inducted, but the fates gave me a high lottery number of 264. I always wished that number could have gone to someone else, where it would have done some good.

 

That's one reason I'm not watching. I'm not up to reliving the Vietnam War at this time in my life. I've had it with all the brutality and inhumanity I see in the World.

 

LBJ fascinates the hell out of me.
I devoured Caro's books, and I'm awed by his political acumen mixed with brutal pragmatism. He was a bizarre creature that could only happen in America. So many good things were done and he even beat back racist pig Russell at his own game. Yet his hubris and blindness allows him to fall completely from grace, like something in Shakespeare. He was the first president who had thousands of people in the streets, calling for his head, cruelly and viciously mocking him (and of course he earned it).This was a man who was totally at home pulling strings and engaging in politics as an art, albeit a dirty one. Yet he left office a total disgrace, and he had no one to blame but himself. And he has to watch as an unprincipled criminal like Nixon steps into the office, making all the right moves to capture his party's nomination, and then maneuvers himself into the presidency while Humphrey goes to his expected crash. I would love to hear what he said when he hung up the phone with Nixon.

 

That's my point. Obviously it didn't happen as Johnson didn't want the wiretapping to come out but it would have been interesting to see if it did.

 

Johnson's political calculation that he had to 'stay the course' with Viet Nam and try to win the war at all costs also has to be seen in the context of the anti-Communist rhetoric of the time. From the time we first entered elementary school in the 60's we were inculcated with an anti-Communist worldview, buoyed by the claim that the capitalist system was the be-all-and-end-all and that any notion to the contrary was merely Communist "propaganda". If Johnson had pulled out of Viet Nam under whatever pretext, it probably would have made it impossible for him to be re-elected - despite his major legislative accomplishments (dwarfing those of practically every other post-war president). But then given how things turned out in the end, this certainly would have been the far nobler course of action.

A Shakesperian tragedy indeed - of epic proportions...

 

To be labeled soft on communism back then was political death. But I still think people could have been educated and the hysteria tamped down a notch by a courageous politician who wanted to teach. Kennedy's 1963 American University speech went in that direction. maybe he would have gone more down that road as time went on. We'll never know. From Wikipedia:

"The content of the speech was unapologetically "dovish" in its pursuit of peace. Kennedy noted that almost uniquely among the "major world powers" the United States and Russia had never been at war with each other. He also acknowledged the massive human casualties that Russia suffered during World War II and declared that no nation had "ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War," a fact that had gone largely unheralded in the West due to the onset of the Cold War. Kennedy sought to draw similarities between the United States and the Soviet Union several times and called for a "reexamination" of American attitudes towards Russia. He warned that adopting a course towards nuclear confrontation would be "evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world."

 

He wasn't wiretapping Nixon, he was wiretapping the South Vietnamese government.

 

Regardless of LBJ "merely" using the NSA or FBI to wiretap Chennault's Watergate apartment and decode cablegram communications from an ally of the United States, he didn't treat U. S. intelligence as an entity independent of politics. He also used the FBI to get telephone company records from Agnew's flight stopover in Albuquerque. The reason that LBJ never revealed the information is that he obtained the information by using national intelligence for inherently political purposes.

Humphrey's knowledge that the Nixon campaign was involved in communications with South Vietnam wasn't enough for Humphrey to reveal it prior to the 1968 election. In doing so, Humphrey would open the door to acknowledging that LBJ used national intelligence to target a political opponent. LBJ took the secret of his surveillance activities to his grave, even though he could have revealed it at any time during the four years he was alive after leaving office. The information about the peace talks was more of a bargaining chip that LBJ held in case he wanted to make a deal with or retaliate against a political adversary.

 

I'm a '57 baby too. If you're like me you got a draft card just when the war was ending.

My Dad had served in Korea. As I approached draft age he told me, "I've seen this all before, if they try to draft you, I'm sending you to Canada."

My Grandfather was a WWII vet who had served in the Pacific theatre. And not surprisingly, he supported the war. He told me, "Of course you'll serve if your nation calls!" It really divided the country.

 

I have only been able to stream this after the wife goes to bed, because she is not the history buff that I am and she hates war footage / interviews with gruesome details. So, that being the case, I tend to start it around 11 PM and fall asleep halfway through it, so I end up watching 1/2 of an episode a night. I am currently halfway through the 4th episode. (No spoilers please! I know the US will pull this out and prevail!)

While I was born pretty much when this war was winding down, it has cast a large shadow over my life, both as an American (for the obvious political and cultural shadow it still casts) and for personal reasons. (I have "adopted" brothers who are Vietnamese and escaped from Ho Chi Minh City in the early 1980s, after their father (who was, I believe, an ARVN officer) was released from a re-education camp. The quotes around adopted are there because it is far easier to say that then try to explain the whole story.)

My thoughts:

1.) The interviews with NVA and VC veterans are amazing. I have seen tons of war documentaries that have interviews with veterans of the opposing forces, but never for the Vietnam War. They are very informative and eye-opening. One of them does seem a little to happy about his role in the war, until you realize he was literally fighting the second Western invader of his country (and fourth invader overall, if you include Japan and China) in his lifetime and would probably smile and suit up to fight a fifth if you gave him the chance. I will not fault the guy for fighting for independence and being proud of it. It is disconcerting that he is talking about killing Americans, sure, but he wasn't in the wrong to fight us. I'm sure he wishes he never had to kill anyone, American or otherwise. I've seen the same look in the faces of many American vets of various wars I've spoken with, who recognize their service as either something great in history or as a defining time in their personal lives.

2.) The French colonial backstory and the fight of the Viet Minh against them was super interesting. I knew the backstory to an extent myself, but I think this documentary may help open a few eyes that assume the US was "fighting the good fight" in this one, given Burns' engaging documentary style. However, there was a lot left out. Burns should have spent some time talking about the economics of colonialism a little more, to underpin the grievances of the Vietnamese people, why Ho had the popular support he had and also, the reforms the various independence movements promised the average citizen. I believe someone upthread linked to an really good article about the land reform portion of this, which was important to rural Vietnamese.

3.) The truest and most heartbreaking quote I have seen so far, in regards to the reasons for the US entering the war, is from the ex-CIA guy (I think) who said something to effect of "We should have looked at this (the Viet Minh's victory over the French) as the end of Western colonialism in Vietnam and not through a Cold War lens." I took an undergrad class on the Vietnam War and our professor pretty much drilled that point into our heads as far as the backdrop for US involvement is concerned and he was a military historian, not some sort of leftist apologist. I was happy to see a someone who was in a position of influence at the time realize and admit that.

4.) Ho Chi Minh is a very interesting, complex, and misunderstood (in America) person. Putting on my Cold War lenses for a moment, one thinks he would have been the ultimate ally against both Sino and Soviet influence in Southeast Asia if we had just, you know, talked to him and cultivated a relationship the many times he literally reached out to us and tried to establish a dialogue based upon his desire for national independence. We might have been able to talk him away from communism. (Doubtful, given the appeal communism had in former colonial states at the time, but still.) He very well may have established a Tito-type of situtation in SE Asia, as the Vietnamese are certainly not natural allies for the Chinese and, given his admiration for the US colonial struggle, he might have rated good relations with the US higher than those with the Soviets. I think Ho wanted Vietnamese independence first and foremost, admired the US up to a point, and would have been willing to let us help establish a united Vietnam, especially if we had allowed the elections to go forward unimpeded after the partition.

5.) I am so very glad that this documentary goes out of its way to show the corruption and brutality of the South Vietnamese government. There was nothing there for us to prop up, other than platitudes about how communisim is inherently evil, therefore anyone anti-communist must be inherently good. I am not saying the communists weren't brutal either, but imagine you are a poor, rural peasant and your choices are between the brutal fellow countrymen that already kicked out the colonialists and promises you land reforms and the brutal fellow countrymen, corrupt to the core and backed by different foreigners, who only promise you "freedom." Who would you chose to support, fully or tacitly, or, at the very least, show apathy towards? Also, the ARVN colonel/ province leader pretty much nailed it with his counter-insurgency strategy. "Give me the cost of one helicopter and I will pacify a province," via improving the lives of the actual people and rooting out corruption.

6.) Really glad to see the racism angle addressed in the documentary. It is an ongoing problem for the US, whenever we decide to stick our military into a foreign country because it inevitably undercuts whatever it is we are trying to accomplish. Also really glad to see the guys who may still have some of those biases ingrained into them due to their experiences in the war also recognize how poisonous it is to them personally and was to the war effort.

7.) Without getting too political, it is amazing how many of the conflicting ideological attitudes you see displayed by Americans of differing opinions about the Vietnam War are still with us, albeit in different forms. The ideological lines that still divide Americans today literally began with this war.

Speculation time:
Going back to 3, say after the French got kicked out, what if we had let the elections be held and then helped the ultimate victor set up a stable country with no conditions or preaching about political ideology? Ho clearly liked America on some level and we could have used that to our advantage. Sure, they would likely have been communist, but they could have been "our kind of communists" much earlier, which is what they have pretty much become today.

Wearing the Cold War lens, they, much like China was in the 1970s, would have been another wedge to split up the threat/myth of communist world domination. On top of that, millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of Americans wouldn't have died...for a mistake. Yes, there was brutal stuff done by the communists, but did our involvement stop any of it? No. We lost. We likely made it worse by sticking around and giving them reasons to be brutal.

Granted, this board may not have 70% of the music we talk about if the above scenario played out, but still.

So, essentially, we accomplished nothing, except getting a bunch of people killed, so a few politicians could save face. Same as it ever was.

 

They accomplished one thing: I will never fully trust a military general or a politician ever again. The reason? One word: Vietnam.

 

Not this December 57 baby

 

Terrific post and agree wholeheartedly with every point. An interesting irony also is that even with the purportedly 'worse' outcome from a military standpoint per our involvement than that achieved in Korea, which of those two situations is the less stable and poses the greater threat to us today? I'm sure I don't have to bother answering.

 

"you were only waiting for this moment to arrive" oyea.

 

Nice post. I would add that conflicting ideology's have always been a part of US history. There were draft riots etc. in the civil war, and in the post Spanish-American war 'Philippine' war there was considerable populist opposition, of which Mark Twain was a prominent part. The Anti-Imperialist League. Of course few Americans went to college in the early 1900's so campuses were not the heavily cross populated sources they became in the '60'. THus earlier anti-war efforts tended to be more 'academic' oriented than activist. And most Americans opposed entry into WW2 prior to Pearl Harbor.

 

I didn't think he had, I thought (maybe it was only an implication?) that the S. Vietnamese ambassador had been bugged along with various people in Saigon. (Edit: I see this was addressed already)

And Nixon used the IRS to target people with audits simply for working on the Dick Cavett show. Two wrongs makes what?

I feel like there is no 'sides' in a weird way, it is all us, all parts of the same human race. The draftee who came to Canada, and the Canadian going the other way who volunteered. What matters now is what can we learn, and to learn you have to suspend closure... it's all 'us'. That's the saddest thing but the only hopeful thing.

 

The last two evenings have been particularly hard to watch. I'm not sure I have any more tears left. I was born in '55 so I had a draft card which I still have. Was in one of the last lotteries though there was not a call up that year and I had a high number.

Even though most of the history is very familiar to me having grown up during the war, and history is one of my passions, it's hard to convey to younger people how torn apart this country was during those years. We think this nation is divided now. It's nothing like it was during Vietnam.

So far I think this has been a well produced and fairly evenhanded portrayal of the war. It was awful for all the sides involved in the conflict.

 

What's been most impressive to me is how Burns & Co. have been so successful in portraying the visceral horror of these events such that they're no longer something half-remembered and long put in the past but instead right here, right now, right in your face. Incredibly hard to watch, but impossible to turn away.

And I'm still waiting for that wake up call...

 

LBJ had already used national intelligence to bug Goldwater's airplane in 1964, which LBJ used to strategize against Goldwater's campaign. There isn't any reason to believe that he had any scruples against doing the same thing to Nixon in 1968.

 

Proof?

 

Chicago and to a lesser extent Kent State were signs of the older generation's hatred of the 'kids'. They were given 'everything' and they grow their hair, destroy sexual mores, take drugs, and protest against a war that is honorable and deserving. And this is what we get for raising a new generation. The really odd part for me is that when that mirror got raised up to them and it was shown that this is the fruits of your hatred, people like the old man were cool with it. Yep, that's what happens--you fight against us, protest, talk of revolution, then you die. It's a sensible sequence of events. Chicago was hard, but Kent State really reopened the wound. The kids got what they deserved. We're in charge, you obey or die.

 

E. Howard Hunt said so...that's about the only proof, and it's pretty weak. There is also conjecture that because someone in Goldwater's campaign was leaking information to the LBJ campaign then it must have been a CIA operative. See this article for the spin:Lyndon Johnson's Watergate

 

thanks. Interesting stuff!

 

That LBJ had any scruples? Good luck.

 

Well said.

The writer also seems to claim, without actually making the argument, that reconciliation and working against imperialism, repression, etc. are incompatible. He edges right up to claiming Burns and Novick somehow intend us to stop talking about Vietnam, paper over our differences, and thus allow governmental shenanigans at home to continue without resistance. I don't see it that way at all, and I think the author is unfair.