Ken Burns' The Vietnam War on PBS

[Nickdfresh]

The tapes of Nixon and Kissinger discussing how they could just coldly flush South Vietnam down the toilet in their world of realpolitik are cringe-worthy. Especially since they expended a relatively large number of American lives in the Cambodian Campaign of 1970 knowing that they probably were going to eventually allow the Saigon regime to collapse, but not until after the 1972 election...

 

[fdcg27]

Yeah, but Nixon inherited the war and was also influenced by the sunk cost fallacy.
Since our country had already invested so many American lives in Vietnam, maybe we should invest a few more?
After all, we must at some point prevail even if the outcome was the same stalemate we won in Korea, although that didn't come to pass in the case of Vietnam.
Nixon did take the war to the North with bombing campaigns and that should arguably have been done years earlier.
At some point, we simply had to exit the quagmire and Nixon and Kissinger made this happen.
It is painful to consider the loss of lives both to us and to the Vietnamese.
I've thought over the past few decades that those in the North and their many supporters in the South saw themselves as nationalists fighting imperialist forces rather than as communists.
To the extent that was true, the indigenous peoples fought our forces with everything they had at vast cost to their own country.

 

[jhellwig]

I'll have to catch this. I am getting in to the war documentaries on Netflix.

Another good one about Vietnam is Last Days in Vietnam. Very powerful.

 

[WhizkidTN]

Originally Posted By: ecotourist
Originally Posted By: HerrStig
" We won't be sending American boys to fight a war Asian boys should be fighting" .... Lyin' Lyndon Johnson. Meanwhile he and whizz kid MacNamara planned the build up. Read Paul Sheehan's book "A bright shining LIE".

In this documentary they show how McNamara sent repeated notes to the Pres expressing his doubts about the whole thing, tried to limit the build up, etc. At one point he asked that the whole process that led to war and the war itself be re-analysed from the very beginning. He actually comes off pretty well.


He commissioned what was later called "The Pentagon Papers" about the true happenings of American political involvement in Southeast Asia. Very interesting stuff.

 

[Burt]

The thought running through my mind while watching was "the Greatest Generation's greatest mistake."