Ken Burns' Vietnam

[Martin Blank]

seriously, they didn't know Hill 875 was hamburger hill?

Edited September 25, 2017 by Martin Blank

[James DiEugenio]

You mean they didn't name it?  

Even though there was a movie about it? 

[Andrew Prutsok]

Ineresting reveiw by Australian Journalist John Pilger, "The Killing of History."...and he mentions Lansdale.

 

There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me - as it must be for many Americans -- it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences.

Edited September 25, 2017 by Andrew Prutsok

[James DiEugenio]

We have that posted at Kennedys and King Andrew.

Some people are posting my review on Facebook and Twitter.

Please do so we can counteract this really bad series in any way we can.

[James DiEugenio]

Fine article by Jamie Galbraith, the more this film gets exposed the better:

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/26/jfk-ordered-full-withdrawal-vietnam-solid-evidence/

My part 2 will be coming out soon.

[Douglas Caddy]

David Talbot posted this on Facebook today:

Last night I watched episode #9 of the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick Vietnam series and it crystallized for me the problems I have with these filmmakers' vision. Yes, they attempt to show the war from different perspectives, but this even-handed approach fails to arrive at the fundamental truth about the war. It was an evil and ruthless enterprise -- not one launched in "good faith by decent people" in the now infamous words of episode #1's narration.

There were no good intentions about a war cynically started in the name of freedom that aligned itself with puppet dictators and resulted in the slaughter of millions. The war revealed America's heart of darkness: the domineering, exterminationist impulse that has driven this country from the genocidal Indian Wars of the late 19th century to the torched villages and massacres in the Philippines during the Spanish American war, to the atrocities in Central America and Haiti during the Banana Wars, to the carnage in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and wherever the U.S. invades next.

In episode 9, Burns and Novick show some of the horrors inflicted on Vietnam's population, but shy from making a judgment about these war crimes. John Kerry is shown before a Senate committee eloquently condemning the widespread crimes committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam, including murder, rape, torture and mutilation. But then the filmmakers offer a rebuttal from another Vietnam veteran who insists these crimes were very limited. What conclusion is the viewer supposed to make? It would've been useful at this point for Burns and Novick to have brought in a historian like Nick Turse, whose book "Kill Anything That Moves" -- based on deep research in the Pentagon's own archives -- proved that the slaughter of civilians was the rule not the exception in Vietnam.

Burns and Novick obviously have sympathy for Vietnam veterans like Kerry who turned against the war. But they repeatedly diminish the commitment and courage of young antiwar protesters who didn't serve in Vietnam out of moral conviction -- because these young activists (including me) didn't need to experience combat to know it was an evil war. Burns and Novick dismiss the Mayday demonstrators who tried to shut down Nixon's Washington in 1971 as "crazies." (Maybe my older brother Stephen Talbot, who was arrested there, might have a different perspective.) Jane Fonda, the bete noir of Vietnam hawks, comes off as a silly left-wing tourist and traitor in the Burns segment about her trip to North Vietnam during the war. A bigger truth is that Fonda risked her Hollywood career to speak out against the criminal air war against the Vietnamese civilian population, and later, with Tom Hayden, worked hard to bring Vietnam vets into their Indochina Peace Campaign.

While vociferous critics of America's criminal air war like Fonda are demeaned, Burns and Novick devote lots of emotionally fraught space to valorizing U.S. POWs, many of whom were pilots guilty of war crimes -- and who were lucky to survive the war and go home to their families after what their bombs did to men, women, and children on the ground. A returning veteran, with restrained fury, recalls the demonstration that greeted him outside Travis Air Force Base as he returned from war. We're supposed to feel that the protesters were overly zealous and callous toward our returning troops. But Travis, as a symbol of the criminal bombardment of Vietnamese cities and villages, was a thoroughly legitimate target of antiwar protest, whether returning soldiers' feelings were hurt or not.

Again and again in episode 9 -- and in other segments of the Burns/Novick series I've watched -- it's U.S. veterans and national security figures who get the final word, as if their suffering and moral wisdom trumps all others.

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post: this series desperately needed the deep clarity of a Daniel Ellsberg or a Tom Hayden. Instead we see only their ghosts, in fleeting clips.

[David Andrews]

but this even-handed approach fails to arrive at the fundamental truth about the war.

"Even-handed" = "Good to those who hold the winning hand."

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post: this series desperately needed the deep clarity of a Daniel Ellsberg or a Tom Hayden. Instead we see only their ghosts, in fleeting clips.

This business of showing photos of Lansdale, Ellsberg, Kerry,  et alia., without discussing them, is a documentarian's trick of equivocation without validation.  In other words, a thrown sop to "those in the know."  "We did our bit for you, objectors.  We are blameless, immaculate.  We challenged Bank of America for you."  Aw, thanks.

Edited September 29, 2017 by David Andrews

[Douglas Caddy]

Famed author James Bamford wrote on Facebook today:

Fabulous private screening last night with producers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick of the last episode of the PBS documentary The Vietnam War. Should be required viewing by everyone. Demonstrates how truly exceptional we are when it come to unmitigated violence, paranoia, and lying. Three million Vietnamese dead; 58,000 American lives lost; constant lies from the first bomb to the humiliating pullout; and insane paranoia about the threat of Communism. Yet we never learn, just replace Vietnam with Iraq and Communism with terrorism. And now we have Trump, the chickenhawk-in-chief who never stops lying, bullying, and threatening. Exceptional indeed.

[Douglas Caddy]

https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2017/09/letter-tricia-nixon-cox-julie-nixon-eisenhower/

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Famed author James Bamford wrote on Facebook today:

Fabulous private screening last night with producers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick of the last episode of the PBS documentary The Vietnam War. Should be required viewing by everyone. Demonstrates how truly exceptional we are when it come to unmitigated violence, paranoia, and lying. Three million Vietnamese dead; 58,000 American lives lost; constant lies from the first bomb to the humiliating pullout; and insane paranoia about the threat of Communism. Yet we never learn, just replace Vietnam with Iraq and Communism with terrorism. And now we have Trump, the chickenhawk-in-chief who never stops lying, bullying, and threatening. Exceptional indeed.

Wow, why is James Bamford's review so different from everybody else's? His review makes it sound like Burns and Novick told the truth.

EDIT: Oh, I think I understand now. The Burns and Novick documentary doesn't get it right regarding JFK's role. Anybody, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Douglas Caddy]

James Bamford's reply to someone on Facebook:

Frankly, Jeanne, having watched all 18 hours of the documentary I saw a great deal of attention to the lives of family members, and as a documentary producer myself, I found it enormously fair and non-judgemental. The facts spoke for themselves. I spent three years in the Navy during the war, most of it in an NSA intelligence unit at Pacific Fleet Headquarters and all I did every day was read top secret reports from the war zone. Which was why I became part of the anti-war movement after I got out and was in law school. Later I wrote the longest chapter in my book, Body of Secrets, on the Vietnam war. So after spending ten years putting the documentary together, and airing 18 hours of film, I can't imagine a more fair and honest portrayal of all side of the war, both at home and in North and South Vietnam.

 

Edited September 30, 2017 by Douglas Caddy

[James DiEugenio]

Bamford is either ignorant, lying, or he is a stiff.

You cannot be fair or honest if:

1.  You never mention the Dulles brothers-- who actually got us into the war.

2. You never mention Lansdale--who created South Vietnam and Diem. 

3.  And instead you call them "decent people"  

4.  You never mention Operation Vulture, the Dulles plan to nuke DIen Bien Phu, which Foster Dulles did all he could to get through Eisenhower.

5. You never examine how Diem and Dulles got rid of Bao Dai--in fact Bao Dai is never mentioned.

6. You never mention Lansdale's key role in the fraudulent 1955 plebiscite which expelled Bao Dai and made Diem dictator.

7. You never quote Foster Dulles as saying that after that election the USA had a clean slate there free of colonialism. (yech)

8. You never mention Lansdale's role in frightening a million people, half of them Catholics to get them out of the north and build up Diem's following in the south.

9. You never mention Kennedy's six year campaign to reject the Dulles/Nixon concept of supporting French colonialist wars.

10. You never mention NSAM 263, 273, 288.

 

If that is Bamford's idea of "fair and honest", he should be working for Hannity.

[Douglas Caddy]

James Bamford wrote on Facebook today: "I'm very glad that Burns has motivated a lot of people to look back at that war, a war we never seem to learn from."

I wonder how many Americans alive today were alive when the Vietnam War was being waged? Those born since the war do not want to view a documentary that covers every contested detail. They want a overall view. The years of the Vietnam War and Watergate overlap. The New York Times today carries an article on the death of Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney who distributed "hush" money in Watergate. How many Americans alive today recognize the Kalmbach's name or the role in played in Nixon's career? How many even know what Watergate was all about?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/obituaries/herbert-kalmbach-who-figured-in-watergate-payoffs-dies-at-95.html

Edited September 30, 2017 by Douglas Caddy

[Kirk Gallaway]

Doug said,

"The New York Times today carries an article on the death of Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney who distributed "hush" money in Watergate. How many Americans alive today recognize the Kalmbach's name or the role in played in Nixon's career? How many even know what Watergate was all about? "

 

Yes, wouldn't it be nice if we could truly learn from our mistakes.

But should anybody here really be surprised or outraged that it didn't go into great detail about Dulles or Lansdale, or more specifically into the nature of the huge train that wasn't about to stop that lead us into Vietnam. The audience of people watching who were not living during the Viet Nam War don't at this point want the overall subject to be about finger pointing. I don't know if that's just human nature about a huge tragedy that people just want to forget about vindication and just try to make things heal. It represents a higher side of us about forgivance,  but  it does work to the advantage of those in the future, who would show such disregard for humanity and dupe others into such a sacrifice.

I've got in late and have only seen the last 3 chapters, so the majority of complaints Jim lists, I've yet to see, though I have no doubt he's correct, and  as I've said, I'm not surprised. But I don't feel the film really sugarcoats anything or lets the U.S. policy makers, or in the episodes I've seen  Nixon off easy at all. It does go into great detail about the genocide, summary massacre of villages, the defoliation and destruction of the native's subsistence and does portray the native Asians as hopeless pawns in superpower geopolitical game.

Burns has always used those anecdotal stories of survivors, and I thought the people he used were very thoughtful people from a number of vantages. It's not impossible that someone could have been on a tour of duty in Vietnam and not seen atrocities or not talked to people who have. I was a teenager  against the war at the time, but I teared up a few times. How could the end leave anybody without a sense of emptiness? That's hardly because of our national defeat of what was our evil policy to begin with, but just the devastation to all who were involved.

There are certainly facts that are revealed that the average viewer had no knowledge of, for example the fact that Nixon negotiated with enemy while running for President. Those phone calls between LBJ and Dirksen and Nixon, I sent to a number of my friends who are my contemporaries a few years back who are reasonably well informed but didn't even know about that until they heard proof in those recordings. To this day, most people don't remember JFK as the President who took a stand against virtually everyone in the room to refrain attacking Cuba and almost inevitably launching WW3, but remember JFK as the President who stood eye to eye with the Soviets and made them back down in the Cuban Missile crisis.

If we want learn from our mistakes in the future, we have to be willing to nail the perpetrators of a disastrous foreign policy as it's happening and then after, and I mean nail them!.

We've had a more recent foreign policy disaster, and the amount of fallout is hardly encouraging. I've never understood why Bill Krystol is continually asked over and over again on the major networks, CNN and now MSNBC. He use to be a Fox and major network guy. He and others lead us into a catastrophic war in Iraq, that us, the region and Europe is paying for today. He should be a disgrace. This has definitely been going on a long time

Imagine how hard it is to produce something about incidents 50 years and really make a dent. (Not that such an effort shouldn't be applauded) For you who would make this "answer" to the Burns film in the other Burns Vietnam thread, you'd be largely 1) preaching to your choir of associates, as the great majority are not interested in re-litigating it 2)or  possibly making inroads to a new fringe of younger people who are largely part of the Trump dynamic. Certainly everybody over 40 has made up their mind about how much they want to be influenced by an expose of a 50 year old major foreign policy blunder. 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 9/29/2017 at 11:05 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Wow, why is James Bamford's review so different from everybody else's? His review makes it sound like Burns and Novick told the truth.

EDIT: Oh, I think I understand now. The Burns and Novick documentary doesn't get it right regarding JFK's role. Anybody, correct me if I'm wrong.

I get it now. The documentary is better (than the government and many historians) at telling the truth about Vietnam, but still doesn't tell the whole truth.

 

 

Edited September 30, 2017 by Sandy Larsen