Ken Burns' new documentary: The Vietnam War

This series starts tonight here in the UK at 9pm on BBC 4..

 

Now comes Chicago 1968. My father's glory, as he cheered the police and yelled at the screen to beat the long hairs and the [racial slurs]. Big time memories for me, as that began me realizing that I needed to sever my ties to my father and realize that he was the reason the revolution was starting.

 

The available evidence does not support that conclusion. JFK gave off very mixed messages about Vietnam and I don't think the evidence clearly supports the theory that the war wouldn't have grown had he lived. Just watch the quote below (from September 1963). He says that it's their war (the South Vietnamese) and they must win it themselves, which supports the view that he wouldn't have committed US ground troops in large numbers. Yet he ends by saying that he doesn't agree with those who say we should withdraw from Vietnam, declaring quite strongly that it would be "a great mistake."

If he was so committed to maintaining our military presences in Vietnam it seems quite possible he might've been sucked into the same path of escalation that LBJ followed. I don't think there's any great likelihood -- one way or the other -- what would've happened in Vietnam under JFK had he been in office until 1968.

 

I didn't like the long, lingering stills of the dead this last episode. I think people 'get it' without that sort of sensationalism: war is bad, its terrible.

 

In different ways, yes. It was a disaster for the U.S. in that it was inconsistent with the false war narrative created by the U.S. government, that the enemy were weak, disorganized, and their defeat was imminent.

It was a disaster for the North Vietnam side because of the great loss of men, both the VC and NVA. This whole Tet offensive seemed to have been a egregious miscalculation on the part of the North Vietnamese. The success of their side was owed to superior tactics, in particular, guerrilla warfare, in which they would ambush U.S. troops, "hit-and-run" style where they would melt into the countryside and virtually disappear after the attack. Even the NVA would employ the same tactics. Today, military historians use the term "assymetrical" type of warfare to describe this. But any native resistance by default will employ this set of tactics, esp. if the invader has superior strength. In defending all the cities and bases attacked in South Vietnam during the Tet offensive, the U.S. finally got to use its superior firepower to some extent.

 

I was hoping there'd be some kind of follow up regarding this and the two offensives that followed in quick succession regarding the failures of the North Vietnamese leadership, but so far nothing except a short bit about the lack of news available to the North Vietnamese public

 

Why are they running it in such a short time span? I'm getting Vietnamed out with a couple of hours airing practically every night. Why can't they run one a week? Especially since its the start of the fall season and I like to screen at least a couple of episodes of all of the new network shows.

 

I'm recording them so I can one every other day or so. It seems like too much to watch them every night.

 

Turns out they do use it! - pretty much the whole song, in the next-to-last episode, and it is very effective. It's in a segment about the rampant drug abuse and declining morale.

 

I wonder if people in their teens and twenties are watching this, how they understand it, and what they will do with it! Or the generations coming into power.

 

You do know there are more episodes right?

 

They finally got to that part, although Anna Chennault was describes as "an intermediary" instead of being mentioned by name. They didn't downplay the importance of this event, but they gave it less time than they gave to a story about a bowl of rice.

 

I bought the DVD box set at Target today so I'll start watching it tonight.
Over the years I've seen many documentaries about Vietnam so I'll see how this one compares.

 

Whenever I see that footage from the Ambassador Hotel, it brings tears to my eyes. Even as a 14-year-old kid, I knew then that all innocence had been lost. Almost fifty years later and the wounds remain wide open.

 

Wow. This is like watching the worst horror story ever conceived unfold right before your eyes. And with Mei Lai and more Cambodia bombing still coming it's not going to get better any time soon.

I was born in 1957, so I was alive during the entire time of our involvement in Viet Nam. However, I was just young enough to have avoided the prospect of ever being directly involved. Now I realize just how lucky I really am.

 

Hue was such a beautiful city once; a loss on the scale of Dresden.

Some of the music as with some of the clips don't match the subject matter for me. Blues Run The Game as covered by Simon & Garfunkel... and For What It's Worth which was written about the Pandora's Box protest in L.A. and not the war? Maybe a minor flaw but it's those little twists away from congruity that make me itchy about this. I've seen footage I know was 1971 used in a 1967-68 context.

The Okamoto interview about how so many of these guys were from a blue collar background, and he himself was born in an internment camp in the '40s... and then the communist leaders in the north sending their sons off to school in Russia.... well done! The brother who signed up for a second stint to spare a younger brother, and that it was ultimately in vain, and taking a hill that had been taken before and then advancing even though the wrong hill was bombed in advance, those will stick in my mind. Really heavy but well done episode tonight despite the song selection not doing it for me. Lots of really amazing audio tape from the time too! Did Johnson call Nixon 'Dick' with a slight bite to the name?

 

Me too. I was born in 1955 and missed it by a year or less. I remember listening to the lottery numbers drawn in 1972 broadcast over the radio. I came up no. 3 according to my birthday (May 28) but wouldn't be eligible for another year, by which time the draft had ended.

 

I have watched several episodes and read a lot of the reviews of the program. I just finished reading a review this morning that was far the best general review. (I didn't know the author, but he is a postdoctoral fellow in history at Bowdoin College.): The Vietnam War Is Not Over

He cites specific examples from the show, and he pans back and notes how Burns and Novack have "contextualized" those events to fit in their narrative. He then show how this contrasts with viewing these same events against a different, broader and (in his view) more historically accurate narrative. He makes this point clear without having we readers wade through "rice paddy fields" of minutiae. At least for me, it was much clearer and more digestible. YMMV.

 

Yes, that article is quite good.

 

A pretty good article, but some of the criticisms are not particularly brilliant -particularly when the author fails to establish what he considers "good intentions" to be. Apparently he does not believe stopping communism qualifies, which is fine as his opinion, but that is hardly universally held and I can easily understand why Burns would not agree.

 

If I had a crystal ball it would be incredibly interesting to see how history would have played out had Johnson publically called out Nixon for his act of treason.

 

yea, but they had the LBJ phone call, which I had been dying to hear.

 

Why would Johnson admit that he was wiretapping an opposing party's campaign? That would make himself look worse than Nixon.

 

That started with Truman in Korea.

 

U.S. Interventions - 1945 to the Present William Blum