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  • Since the first two episodes of Ken Burns’ Vietnam, there hasn’t been much comment here. Since Stan ran to Canada then came slinking back, I’m probably the only other one old enough in this forum to have been through the entire thing – ‘65 to ’76… and the last 6y of it as a soldier.

    I watched the 10th and last episode just now, again, because I didn’t think I absorbed the full impact of it last week when it ran. There is still the unmistakable idea that Burns wants to leave you with that has been present since the first two episodes aired: Think long and hard about getting involved in a war where the outcome and all the consequence, intended or otherwise, are not clear; and, oh, BTW, they never will be.

    In this last episode, Burns wants the viewer to fully understand how badly the people of Vietnam suffered and how much the United States contributed to that suffering during the very end of the Nixon and then Ford administrations. Sobering.

    That America did not achieve victory in this particular military undertaking is of little consequence compared to the damage that was done to the US reputation of standing arm and arm with others who seek freedom and democratic governance. America bailed on the South Vietnamese – plain and simple. All the sensible reasons that have been offered over time for doing that in retrospect were short sighted and mostly baseless or simply made up to save face.

    During the tragic 4 or 5 months, in late 1974 to March of 1975 when the US shamelessly slithered out of that country, leaving hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese to suffer at the hands of the Communists in the North, America demonstrated its weakness and lack of resolve.

    For me and like the CIA officer stationed in Saigon from 1970 until he left in late ‘74 who shared his thoughts of the Vietnam war in this documentary, we were somehow detached from it, like looking out of a B52 bomb bay door and watching tons of ordnance fall to the ground then going about whatever business we had to tend to.

    The Burns Vietnam piece, much like he brought the horrors of the Civil War to our consciousness, brought home to me that while the US may have had good intentions in 1965 and through the immense military buildup from 1967 to 1972, the war itself was horribly mismanaged if not bravely fought. Moreover, the negotiations to end it and what America did to the South Vietnamese, by it’s inaction, as the North Vietnamese invaded and produced the fall of Saigon and surrender of the South Vietnamese Government, stands, in my view, as America’s darkest and most shameful moment. If Burns wanted viewers to get that point, he succeeded with me.

    Last year, I visited HoChiMinh City (formerly Saigon), Hue and Danang (I spent time here in ‘72). It remains a beautiful country with kind people who still look up to America and are incredibly welcoming to Americans, despite what we did to them and failed to do for them. The guide I hired to take us around was a young man, in his early 20s. He was Catholic and staunchly anti-communist. I’m reasonably sure an elder in his family was either a government official in the south or an ARVN soldier. Some of his family lived in the US; some still in and around Saigon (his term for the city and plainly so). He was quite candid and surprisingly open especially after I told him I had been a pilot in the Vietnam War and flew out of Danang airbase.

    The 8h tour and the personal interchange I had the privilege of experiencing with this young Vietnamese man showed me that things in Vietnam we’re OK and at the same time were not OK at all. There is a palpable tension there between the average citizen and the North Vietnamese Communist appartachik. Yet there is this sort of euphoric resilience that makes me even more upset about our conduct in this part of the world that we essentially abandoned – this having only been more fully understood because of Burn’s excellent documentary – Vietnam. If you haven’t seen the whole thing do it or at least watch the last 2 or 3 episodes for full effect.
    There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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    • ^ Thanks for that Jeff

      Have you seen 'First they killed my Father'? Depiction of the Cambodian genocide from a child's point of view.

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      • Shocking news: Tom Wopat charged with assaulting girl, 16!
        Associated Press Published 3:48 p.m. ET Sept. 26, 2017

        Uh I would think about changing my Avatar TOM

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        • I, too have watched Ken Burn’s documentary and it has evoked many memories. Jeff is right when he suggests that we were on opposite ends of the conflict. I opposed the war and marched several times against the war. I marched when the police attacked protesters with clubs and dogs in Ann Arbor of all places. I marched in Washington when the police rounded up anyone they could and jailed them until lawyers on the side of people were able to secure their release.I have never seen the country so divided as it was then. We are now as close to that division as we were then. Those who protested the war were surprised to learn what a profound effect our effort had upon Nixon. The war affected us at home as well as those fighting the war albeit in different and profound ways. I believe that the effort of those who opposed this senseless war had an effect upon bringing it to an end. The one thing that I have come to appreciate is the sacrifices those who fought the war made. Both my wife and I make a point of thanking vets of this war for their effort and sacrifice whenever we meet someone identified as a vet while out in public. I have the utmost respect for Jeff and his comrades who risked their lives fighting what in the end those in charge knew could not be won.

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          • Originally posted by WingsFan View Post
            ^ Thanks for that Jeff

            Have you seen 'First they killed my Father'? Depiction of the Cambodian genocide from a child's point of view.
            No, but I think I have lived and now better understand how horrendous, on so many levels, the Vietnam War was and how America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, abrogated it's responsibility to live up to that standard in the face of the worst kinds of communists - the Politburo of North Vietnam after HoChiMin became mostly powerless and was replaced by Le Duan in 1960. Not sure I want to delve into the horrors of Pol Pot who the NVA actually got rid of.

            Uncle Ho, as he is reverently called, was a gentle, thoughtful man whose goal was to unite Vietnam by mostly peaceful means if not military pressure exerted through counter insurgency and jungle warfare. Duan was a ruthless political infighter within the communist party, admired and supported by Khrushchev and Brezhnev - horrible Stalinists - and supported militarily by the Communist Chinese as well.

            Vietnam was the battlefield test site for these two Communist powers lining up, for different reasons and objectives, against American Hegemony. Le Duan was an important central figure in carrying out both unconventional and conventional military operations against the Americans. So, there was some truth to the Domino Theory, mostly discredited by the Anti-War movement of the late 60s. Admittedly, the struggle between those two opposing ideas was not black and white in Indochina from the early 50s until the end of Western influence, ideologically, in Vietnam. Corruption was and still is rampant in that region.

            Anyway Le Duan was a shit. After Saigon fell, he and his Communist henchmen, in true Stalinist colors and mostly applauded by the USSR, tracked down and murdered or imprisoned (re-educated as they told the West at the time) most of the S. Vietnamese intelligensia. Then they rounded up all the Catholics they could surreptitiously find and murdered them - that is a less well known bit of history). Following that, they collectivized the entirety of Vietnamese agriculture and nationalized or centralized all means of production. This the Chinese were big on as well as having the NVA do it's dirty work in Cambodia for them.

            Collectivization was a colossal failure. Millions starved or, the educated ones, left the country in droves causing a another brain drain. Then came Le Duan's death and in came Doi Moi, a top down reformation of Vietnam's planned, Soviet style economy. I had an opportunity to discuss this with the young guide I hired in Saigon. He made the point that the communists are as corrupt as any S.Vietnamese government ever was. Important and loyal Communists live in big new houses and drive fancy cars, eat extravagant meals at the best restaurants and drink expensive wine; the average citizen rides a moped and lives on a couple of dollars a day and hopefully has a job.

            Here's a link to an interesting read about Doi Moi. Seems pretty accurate and well researched and useful if you want to understand the interesting balance that exists between free enterprise undertakings and the controlled economies of Communist lore.

            There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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            • Originally posted by UMStan White View Post
              I, too have watched Ken Burn?s documentary and it has evoked many memories. Jeff is right when he suggests that we were on opposite ends of the conflict.
              I too have tremendous respect for the anti-war movement and those who actively participated in it. So happens, you and I were on UM's campus together from 1966-70 (or a part of it), me with a high and tight and in an ROTC uniform and you with long hair doing your best Woodstock act admiring bra-less coeds dancing near and around you....most of them high on weed!

              Burns did a great job of appropriately depicting the rectitude of the Anti-War movement and what some of us in the military, at the time, thought was seditious. There was an Army guy interviewed in a couple of episodes, probably our age, that still thinks that. I know better. It really did help end the senseless killing of Americans in a war, that as it was waged by Washington, was not, as you point out, winnable. Of equal import though was the impact on Nixon of Watergate that affected his ability to govern. Whether that would have changed the end result that I have spoken about (the abrogation of our responsibility to the South Vietnamese) is debatable.
              There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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              • STFU
                Shut the fuck up Donny!

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                • "So happens, you and I were on UM's campus together from 1966-70 (or a part of it), me with a high and tight and in an ROTC uniform and you with long hair doing your best Woodstock act admiring bra-less coeds dancing near and around you....most of them high on weed!"

                  Oh how true that was. Just the other day i was talking to my best friend, who attended UM and was my roommate for three years how great it was to see coeds walking around braless. Don't pretend you didn't notice!

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                  • He doesn't know jack about it.

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                    • Don't even know what to say today...over 400 wounded...my God

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                      • Saw a stat a bit ago, our 2nd battle in fucking Fallujah, and most deadly in 2004, killed 54 and injured 400+.

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                        • And I can't wait for our mentally impaired President to make his statement and say more awkward ass shit that makes no sense. How many times does he mention his POS hotel?

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                          • This guy, Paddock, must have had help. First, he was shooting an illegal, fully-automatic rifle. Second, how the hell does he get 10 rifles (as reported) into a hotel room in downtown Las Vegas? Some Islamic group has taken credit, saying he recently converted. His "companion" surely knows what was up with him.
                            I'll let you ban hate speech when you let me define hate speech.

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                            • Well ya'll have done a bang up job politicizing the hurricanes so I had no doubt you'd be all over the mass shooting...good job.
                              Shut the fuck up Donny!

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                              • The rifles are easy to get in. Put them in suitcases and carry them up on a rolling cart. Hell, tip a bell boy 10 bucks and they'll carry them for you.
                                "The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is sometimes hard to verify their authenticity." -Abraham Lincoln

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