Headlines Read:
"Ken Burn's Documentary on the Vietnam War Glosses Over Devastating Civilian Toll"
"Ken Burns Never Knew How Wrong He Was About the Vietnam War"
"Veterans Frustrated with Ken Burn's documentary on the Vietnam War"
"Ken Burns and Lynn Novik Don't Understand anti-Vietnam War"
Just beginning to watch Ken Burn’s PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. Pretty much covered two episodes, so far. Stopped after an hour into the second episode. The reason we stopped after an hour is the evening was late but also because the series is exhausting to watch. Interesting. Enlightening. Extremely well done. But yeah, exhausting, emotionally. There’s no comic relief. Of course that’s on purpose. War is hell. Why should watching it be fun? It’s also true that I tend not to watch recordings of games that my team lost because of the sadness effect. Mr. Burns has been quoted as saying that we didn’t lose the war, to wit: "It wasn’t a defeat; nobody took over the United States. It was not surrender. We failed."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-lynn-novick-documentary/
Still, we did lose. We lost a lot. A lot of lives. Nearly 60,000 US military lives lost. Other’s lives shattered. Other countries, like South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand’s armies lost lives. Of course the biggest loser in terms of deaths was Vietnam. The north lost over a million killed in action. Millions more civilians, a quarter of a million South Vietnamese regulars killed, over 3,000,000 in total. Much of the country was laid to waste by the war. So it should be difficult for me to talk about what we lost when the country of Vietnam lost so many and so much. But there it is. All politics is local.
The documentary quotes survivors, North Vietnamese regulars: "nobody wins in war." People who weren’t directly involved in the fighting get to declare winners and losers. The scorekeepers have little or no skin in the fight. Those fighting the war don’t have that luxury. They live or die or are maimed in chaos with little or no chance to look for a scoreboard. The people of Vietnam suffered beyond what most people in the United States can even imagine. The Communist collective won, only the people lost. So the deaths of millions achieved a goal. Millions more would subsequently die to purge any thought of dissent. The Colonial French, gone for good. The US taught a lesson. The US may or may not have slowed a communist takeover of the far east. You’d have to have us pull out of Vietnam when Kennedy was President to know for sure. But it’s certain there’s little positive that came out of our experience in Vietnam. The 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead are silent. Burns seems to be saying, maybe we (collectively) should have learned something here. Let’s document it and make sure it is not easily forgotten. Experience is the best teacher only when it's remembered.
Anyway, besides not being a good way to relax, the show is pretty balanced and therefore enlightening. Politics being what it is, I get sick of a priori attitudes. You already know before you see or read what somebody has to say, what they will say. it’s true by rule, not observation (a posteriori ). Subjectivity outweighs objectivity. There’s also a lot of screaming going on. ALL CAPS. Like you must be deaf, so they have to SAY IT LOUDER. What’s the point? Well, I guess for people who can only bobble their head (Limbaugh’s ditto heads?) they want to be fed the same dog food they’re used to. Comfort food and comfort zones are nice. The Washington Post and New York Times on the one side and Breitbart and Limbaugh on the other. The good news is you don’t have to listen or read either of these because you already know what they’re going to say. They have an opinion and they’re RIGHT (uh, correct for the lefties) and they just want you to know it. The Washington Post stays up at night figuring out ways to attack the President of the United States. It’s just what they do. They hated Nixon. They hated Reagan. They hate Trump. Go figure. The alt-rights hated Obama. They hated Clinton and they hated Carter. Go figure. So anything that happens will be spun accordingly. I make it a point to try to read both, when I can, then try to put them into a mental blender and spin. Once homogenized there's often a grain of truth. Consensus is golden because it's so darned rare.
After watching and reading about Mr. Burns decade-long-to-produce opus, I feel he’s accomplished something he can be proud of. He didn't set out to make a particular point. It’s all about letting the experiences of those who witnessed the events speak for themselves. Mr. Burns is noted for being a bit of a liberal (his background) but he is an historian and he is quite smart. He wanted to achieve a sense of balance. Polemics are seldom educational because they are so divisive. I read a number of reviews before approaching the documentary. Ironically, many from the right and many from the left don’t like it. The left thinks he’s telling the story wrong and vice versa. That’s a really good sign. It made me eager to see it, not only from a current perspective but also a historical one.
I was 19 in 1967 and very much draft bait. Enrolled in college for a couple years by then, I had a deferral. After four years of college, that deferral was pretty much up. My draft lottery number in 1970, the year I was exposed, was 123, which made me prime around May. I had my physical in April and had to make a quick decision. Getting drafted meant two years of active obligation and living in Greater New Orleans meant Fort Polk (Fort Puke as my Army Vet friends call it) and Tigertown, as it was called then, likely meant a 13 month unaccompanied tour of Southeast Asia. Believe me, politics aside, by 1970 anybody my age who wanted to be an 11 Bravo walking rice paddies carrying a M16 in Vietnam had room temperature IQ. I knew and we all knew friends, relatives, acquaintances and others who let you know that whatever was going on overseas at that time was a cluster-f*ck. Maybe before 1970 you could have made another case. But not by then. A guy I had PE with in high school died guarding the embassy in Saigon during Tet. Safe MP duty. Never saw it coming. I knew friend’s relatives who had gone missing. Was at a going away party with them and within a few months they were gone forever. I also knew and talked with numerous people who understood our leadership didn’t want to lose a war but had no clue on how to do anything other than expand it. Look at how many enemy were dying. That seemed to be the plan. Keeping score of the dead was the only strategy I could perceive. That worked both ways. Dying for your country can be a meaningful thing. Dying for your country for no achievable purpose other than to not look bad, is a travesty. I didn’t protest because the people I saw protesting were even more clueless than the people who got drafted or joined up. They had no particular plan, they just were against war. To just cut and run was a ridiculous idea. I knew it would get straightened out, eventually. The people in charge were smarter than the protestors. It didn’t take a genius to see that. By the time Nixon won the election he saw the handwriting on the wall and was reducing troop strength and trying to get the South to defend itself and get us home, gradually. In the meantime, I had to survive. So I took a couple tests and joined the Air Force. Investing four years over two, with the promise of further education. I was lucky. My Dad dropped out of high school to sell cigarettes on the street corner during the depression. He later regretting not finishing high school. So he saw to it that I got an education, including a chance to attend college. I owe him that. That education allowed me to test well enough to qualify for the Air Force. It also got me four years of deferment to attend college and grow up a bit before carrying a gun in a rice paddy. Like I said, fortunate, very fortunate. The Air Force was good to me and for me. We fought both the cold and the hot wars at SAC HQ where I worked underground for nearly four years. I met Ruth and got married. Uncle Sam made a man out of me. My parents allowed that to happen.
Today I feel honored and privileged to be able to watch Ken Burn’s documentary on Vietnam. I think it’s well made and is fairly balanced. It won’t please either the right or the left and that’s a good thing. For those who served their country for what they believed in, whether that’s American, Vietnamese, Australian, New Zealander, South Korean, Thailander, or who those who died as an innocent civilian caught in the cross fire, or even those who honestly protested the war as an act of conscience, let’s hope it resonates as a truthful document.
During a meeting a few years ago between Ken Burns and the President:
"That (This) will be your most controversial work," Obama told him.
"Yes, but only among those who don't watch it," Burns replied.
I'd better go watch.
"Ken Burn's Documentary on the Vietnam War Glosses Over Devastating Civilian Toll"
"Ken Burns Never Knew How Wrong He Was About the Vietnam War"
"Veterans Frustrated with Ken Burn's documentary on the Vietnam War"
"Ken Burns and Lynn Novik Don't Understand anti-Vietnam War"
Just beginning to watch Ken Burn’s PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. Pretty much covered two episodes, so far. Stopped after an hour into the second episode. The reason we stopped after an hour is the evening was late but also because the series is exhausting to watch. Interesting. Enlightening. Extremely well done. But yeah, exhausting, emotionally. There’s no comic relief. Of course that’s on purpose. War is hell. Why should watching it be fun? It’s also true that I tend not to watch recordings of games that my team lost because of the sadness effect. Mr. Burns has been quoted as saying that we didn’t lose the war, to wit: "It wasn’t a defeat; nobody took over the United States. It was not surrender. We failed."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-lynn-novick-documentary/
Still, we did lose. We lost a lot. A lot of lives. Nearly 60,000 US military lives lost. Other’s lives shattered. Other countries, like South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand’s armies lost lives. Of course the biggest loser in terms of deaths was Vietnam. The north lost over a million killed in action. Millions more civilians, a quarter of a million South Vietnamese regulars killed, over 3,000,000 in total. Much of the country was laid to waste by the war. So it should be difficult for me to talk about what we lost when the country of Vietnam lost so many and so much. But there it is. All politics is local.
The documentary quotes survivors, North Vietnamese regulars: "nobody wins in war." People who weren’t directly involved in the fighting get to declare winners and losers. The scorekeepers have little or no skin in the fight. Those fighting the war don’t have that luxury. They live or die or are maimed in chaos with little or no chance to look for a scoreboard. The people of Vietnam suffered beyond what most people in the United States can even imagine. The Communist collective won, only the people lost. So the deaths of millions achieved a goal. Millions more would subsequently die to purge any thought of dissent. The Colonial French, gone for good. The US taught a lesson. The US may or may not have slowed a communist takeover of the far east. You’d have to have us pull out of Vietnam when Kennedy was President to know for sure. But it’s certain there’s little positive that came out of our experience in Vietnam. The 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead are silent. Burns seems to be saying, maybe we (collectively) should have learned something here. Let’s document it and make sure it is not easily forgotten. Experience is the best teacher only when it's remembered.
Anyway, besides not being a good way to relax, the show is pretty balanced and therefore enlightening. Politics being what it is, I get sick of a priori attitudes. You already know before you see or read what somebody has to say, what they will say. it’s true by rule, not observation (a posteriori ). Subjectivity outweighs objectivity. There’s also a lot of screaming going on. ALL CAPS. Like you must be deaf, so they have to SAY IT LOUDER. What’s the point? Well, I guess for people who can only bobble their head (Limbaugh’s ditto heads?) they want to be fed the same dog food they’re used to. Comfort food and comfort zones are nice. The Washington Post and New York Times on the one side and Breitbart and Limbaugh on the other. The good news is you don’t have to listen or read either of these because you already know what they’re going to say. They have an opinion and they’re RIGHT (uh, correct for the lefties) and they just want you to know it. The Washington Post stays up at night figuring out ways to attack the President of the United States. It’s just what they do. They hated Nixon. They hated Reagan. They hate Trump. Go figure. The alt-rights hated Obama. They hated Clinton and they hated Carter. Go figure. So anything that happens will be spun accordingly. I make it a point to try to read both, when I can, then try to put them into a mental blender and spin. Once homogenized there's often a grain of truth. Consensus is golden because it's so darned rare.
After watching and reading about Mr. Burns decade-long-to-produce opus, I feel he’s accomplished something he can be proud of. He didn't set out to make a particular point. It’s all about letting the experiences of those who witnessed the events speak for themselves. Mr. Burns is noted for being a bit of a liberal (his background) but he is an historian and he is quite smart. He wanted to achieve a sense of balance. Polemics are seldom educational because they are so divisive. I read a number of reviews before approaching the documentary. Ironically, many from the right and many from the left don’t like it. The left thinks he’s telling the story wrong and vice versa. That’s a really good sign. It made me eager to see it, not only from a current perspective but also a historical one.
I was 19 in 1967 and very much draft bait. Enrolled in college for a couple years by then, I had a deferral. After four years of college, that deferral was pretty much up. My draft lottery number in 1970, the year I was exposed, was 123, which made me prime around May. I had my physical in April and had to make a quick decision. Getting drafted meant two years of active obligation and living in Greater New Orleans meant Fort Polk (Fort Puke as my Army Vet friends call it) and Tigertown, as it was called then, likely meant a 13 month unaccompanied tour of Southeast Asia. Believe me, politics aside, by 1970 anybody my age who wanted to be an 11 Bravo walking rice paddies carrying a M16 in Vietnam had room temperature IQ. I knew and we all knew friends, relatives, acquaintances and others who let you know that whatever was going on overseas at that time was a cluster-f*ck. Maybe before 1970 you could have made another case. But not by then. A guy I had PE with in high school died guarding the embassy in Saigon during Tet. Safe MP duty. Never saw it coming. I knew friend’s relatives who had gone missing. Was at a going away party with them and within a few months they were gone forever. I also knew and talked with numerous people who understood our leadership didn’t want to lose a war but had no clue on how to do anything other than expand it. Look at how many enemy were dying. That seemed to be the plan. Keeping score of the dead was the only strategy I could perceive. That worked both ways. Dying for your country can be a meaningful thing. Dying for your country for no achievable purpose other than to not look bad, is a travesty. I didn’t protest because the people I saw protesting were even more clueless than the people who got drafted or joined up. They had no particular plan, they just were against war. To just cut and run was a ridiculous idea. I knew it would get straightened out, eventually. The people in charge were smarter than the protestors. It didn’t take a genius to see that. By the time Nixon won the election he saw the handwriting on the wall and was reducing troop strength and trying to get the South to defend itself and get us home, gradually. In the meantime, I had to survive. So I took a couple tests and joined the Air Force. Investing four years over two, with the promise of further education. I was lucky. My Dad dropped out of high school to sell cigarettes on the street corner during the depression. He later regretting not finishing high school. So he saw to it that I got an education, including a chance to attend college. I owe him that. That education allowed me to test well enough to qualify for the Air Force. It also got me four years of deferment to attend college and grow up a bit before carrying a gun in a rice paddy. Like I said, fortunate, very fortunate. The Air Force was good to me and for me. We fought both the cold and the hot wars at SAC HQ where I worked underground for nearly four years. I met Ruth and got married. Uncle Sam made a man out of me. My parents allowed that to happen.
Today I feel honored and privileged to be able to watch Ken Burn’s documentary on Vietnam. I think it’s well made and is fairly balanced. It won’t please either the right or the left and that’s a good thing. For those who served their country for what they believed in, whether that’s American, Vietnamese, Australian, New Zealander, South Korean, Thailander, or who those who died as an innocent civilian caught in the cross fire, or even those who honestly protested the war as an act of conscience, let’s hope it resonates as a truthful document.
During a meeting a few years ago between Ken Burns and the President:
"That (This) will be your most controversial work," Obama told him.
"Yes, but only among those who don't watch it," Burns replied.
I'd better go watch.
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