The Vietnam War Documentary

[Kronx]

I don't know if there are fellow documentary nerds like myself here, but on Netflix now is the Ken Burns documentary on The Vietnam War. As with all things Ken Burns, it's very thorough and long. 10 episodes. Each episode 90 to 120 mins long. It looks at all things around the war: the history, the politics, the folks who fought in it(from both sides), and it is in my opinion owed to the soldiers who fought there worth the watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPTKLuMWijU

 

[sdt354]

I've been watching it too. The lies told to the American public were unbelievable. So much death on all sides, and for what? To fight communism was the excuse. A fat cat sitting in the oval office was more worried about getting re-elected than the welfare of our men and woman in the military. That was the real reason we were there. That was just so wrong. The civilian death toll was huge, incredible. If ever mistrust of my own Gov't was justified, that was a beginning.

 

[Kronx]

Agreed. Not only were the lies incredulous, but just the diplomatic fuck ups left and right. And the tragic irony that one of the main reasons we even got sucked into that was because France basically said "Let us have Vietnam back and restore our former empire or we'll have no choice but to side with the Soviet Union" and in the end we get sucked into that mess and France bails on it.

And I couldn't help but see some striking similarities between decisions we made regarding Vietnam and decisions we've made regarding Afghanistan. Very different reasons for engaging in those lands, but the people of both countries share some similar threads of guerilla warfare, decades of experience fighting foreign invaders, and fiercely independent.

And for me, occams razor hit hard watching this in regards to the assassination of the Kennedys. I believe it was in retaliation of the deaths of Diem and his brother from that coup. Eye for an eye - brother for a brother.

 

[Redbone]

I've been watching it too. The lies told to the American public were unbelievable. So much death on all sides, and for what? To fight communism was the excuse. A fat cat sitting in the oval office was more worried about getting re-elected than the welfare of our men and woman in the military. That was the real reason we were there. That was just so wrong. The civilian death toll was huge, incredible. If ever mistrust of my own Gov't was justified, that was a beginning.

+1, Listening to Walter Cronkite, whom everybody loved, give the nightly reports which were just enough to show what the government wanted us to see. It was long about Jimmy Carter's presidency when I started to question what was really going on. I had heard the stories from soldiers I knew that were returning from the Vietnam war which really jaded my thoughts of our government. One that really hit home was a guy I looked up to from our church was killed in '69 so I was really worried about all the community members that were being sent off to war.
The government tells so many lies to the public and has become so big that they don't know what their own ass is doing!:bang head:

 

[sdt354]

And for me, occams razor hit hard watching this in regards to the assassination of the Kennedys. I believe it was in retaliation of the deaths of Diem and his brother from that coup. Eye for an eye - brother for a brother.[/QUOTE]

JFK and Robert Kennedy's assassinations spark plenty of speculation still. My father swore LBJ was involved. And he could make a credible argument. LBJ hated them both. Political enemies at the least! Me, I look at who got screwed by the Kennedys after helping get them elected. Old Joe Sr. was known to have major Mob associations going back to the bootlegging days. Joe Kennedy had backings of the major labor unions to assist in getting his son elected president. But Bobby K. was trying to put them all in jail afterward! I think that is a place to look for a motive. JFK could have stopped the suffering and the deaths in Vietnam. JFK is still revered in this area, where the family still resides. But he really fk'd up with the Cuba invasion and was responsible for many deaths in the Bay of pigs too. And he came very close to getting America in a nuclear war with the former USSR.

 

[Kronx]

What sticks out to me is Kennedy made it public that supported a coup. Well technically his position was he wouldn't support one, but if there was one he wouldn't stop it either. Which was pretty much the nod to the generals to have their coup. So looking at it from a South Vietnamese perspective it straight up looks like America supported Diem and his brother's deaths. The documentary shows the Vietnamese who cozied up the the French and the Japanese didn't have long lifespans after the French and Japanese lost power there. Showing me they don't forget and there are some things they don't forgive.

Madame Nhu was almost like a real life Vietnamese version of Cruella De Vill, but she had the money and influence and shady connections.

 

[liptoss]

A very informative and visually stunning presentation... even to a Canadian

 

[Fire-medic]

I've been reading a multi-book Vietnam history, very interesting. It has lots of personal details about the whole 20th century history of the country. Being of draft age but in college, and with a high draft #, I didn't get called. I had friends and classmates who did get called, and some are no-longer with us. I also have a friend who's a bit older than me, he's a professional engineer, and was a member of the Vietnamese armed forces, he patrolled the waters, and when the end came, he was able to get his family out and came to the USA. He doesn't talk about it at-all, but he has spoken to me when I asked him direct questions, after getting his cooperation. One thing he said is, "I didn't expect to live to be age thirty, given how the war was going."

Old men start them, young men fight them. Rest in peace, those who didn't return alive. Those who did make it back, I hope you have been able to become civilians, and to lead productive lives after your time in-country. It still angers me when I think of comments made disparaging Senator John McCain and his prisoner-of-war status.