Ken Burns' The Vietnam War on PBS

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Anybody been following the series? It's pretty good. I have been learning a lot of stuff about the war that I never knew before and I am a history buff.
 
It's streaming right now on PBS.org.

It's [censored] up, but so is war, so it's about right. IDK how much is Ken Burns' doing and how much is his helper but they had a lot of film, photos, and interview subjects to work with.
 
Originally Posted By: Scrum67
Netflix has all of his docs.. So I cant wait for this one to make its way over. I love Ken Burns.

We're getting it on 2 different PBS channels on Telus in BC.

It's a very good series. I think a lot of people will learn a lot.

I'm really glad I didn't end up in Vietnam.
 
I watched episode one last night on DVR. The history goes back to the 1800s when it was a French colony. The communists, Japan in WW II screwed up Vietnam even more. The US intervention could never have worked.

I was 18 in 1971 and got draft number 114. Still have draft card. I am 1H. One-holding. They said they will notify me if anything changes. They only called up to number 100 for physicals. But they did not get drafted as they stopped sending solders over around that time.
 
Very high quality documentary. Clearly this was a labor of love for these folks and it shows.

I was a young kid in 1967. But I clearly remember the slogans from the war hawks - "America love it or leave" and "Better dead than red". Any way you measure it the Vietnam war was a terrible and costly tragedy. America's political and military leaders at the time repeatedly lied about the status of the war for years while the bombing, fighting and dying went on and on.

Thousands of lives lost, families permanently ruined, many thousands of incapacitating life long injuries, head trauma, PTSD, suicides, death from cancer related to agent orange exposure - and all this suffering for nothing in the end.

We have been fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for 13 years and running with no end in sight...
 
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" 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".
 
My mother in law is from north Vietnam and said her father sent half of their family to south Vietnam, she was one of them, in order to insure that the family survives somehow. She finally got to visit her full family about 10 years ago. Some of the stories she tells me is amazing.
 
I've been streaming it free. Very well done. I was too young when it was all going on, though I remember older neighbors who were called up. Interesting that only 20-something % were ever sent to combat! The rest were in other areas. Also, that Westmoreland was such a screw-up. I remember the early part of McNamara's involvement and advocacy, yet later he advised Johnson he'd changed his mind, it wasn't winable, and he ought to get out. He found himself reassigned and replaced by Clifford. I'd originally thought McNamara only had regrets long after.

Taking hills with heavy casualities...only to later abandone them? Having to retake ground twice? Lousy M-16 that needed regular cleaning and jammed when in the heat of battle?

FUBAR...
 
Lived through it all and the 1962/1973 years affected the rest of my life. We knew we couldn't win in Vietnam when the US first got involved. Destroyed LBJ, ended many friendships and divided families. Pulled out of there in a panic for all the world to see after destroying the country and the loss of 58,220 military. I think most families are familiar with at least one name on the Vietnam War Memorial. Captain Martin Fanning, Albuquerque,NM, US Army, KIA 4/24/71,helicopter crash due to enemy ground fire.Three brothers and four sisters.
 
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The only question one is left with is what did we learn?
Maybe not very much or at least not the right lessons.
 
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.
 
I think overall it's very good and very accurate from what little I've seen. Much of it is obviously sourced from journalist Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie about Sheehan's friend and vocal critic of the war-of-attrition that Westmorland's command instituted, LTC John Paul Vann (ret.). Vann went on to become essentially a civilian 'general' who was essentially in command in the last phases of American involvement until his death in a chopper crash. Sheehan, who was in Vietnam from the beginning of major American involvement, is also interviewed...
 
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".


It's very good, Sheehan was interviewed for the series...
 
A good friend and client of mine kept a hair raising journal of all of his missions in Viet Nam, as an eighteen - nineteen year old marine in a recon unit. He had been in contact with the production group for this series.

He told me he didn't recognize this war. He suggested The 10,000 Day War was a more accurate account.
 
Many of us seem to forget that Robert McNamara stuck his chest out and proudly allowed the war in Vietnam to be called "McNamara's War".
It was only many years later that this long retired defense secretary expressed his doubts and that always seemed to me to be a bit of a false apology in that when it would have mattered in both American and Vietnamese lives, Bob expressed no doubts at all. It was only as he neared his end that he felt compelled to give indications of regret that rang false to me at the time.
The definitive book on the roles played by American leaders in the debacle that was Vietnam is one by H. R. McMaster entitled Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.
This is a fascinating read that puts Paul Sheehan's sometimes hagiographic work where some are concerned on the trailer.
I was liable for the draft for a single year during this era. I thank the Lord that I wasn't called to serve.
We were knee deep in the big muddy, to steal a lyric and misuse it and subsequent adventures have shown that we may not have learned anything at all from that experience.
It was then and remains now all too easy to spill another man's blood in the service of his country.
To do so without just cause is both immoral and an unforgiveable betrayal.
 
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 was covering his ... .
 
I doubt that any person alive today or in generations to come will ever see the President of the United States, on a nationwide TV broadcast, look at the American public and state he wasn't a "crook." Tricky ****'s words, not mine. "I'm not a crook." Turns out he was a crook, a very neurotic crook.
Should have gone to a federal correctional facility for obstruction of justice. And Ford should have been jailed for pardoning that crook.
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Bernstein, Woodward and DEEP THROAT took that crook down. I'll never forget watching Milhouse giving that goofy victory salute as he was about to board Marine One. Never.
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