The Vietnam War (Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, 2017)
I was hoping The Vietnam War would offer some sliver of a justification for the war. Instead, the 1,035-minute documentary confirmed that it was a completely fucking pointless, to put it lightly, waste of lives. While I have some reservations (especially the opening narration), here are observations/things I learned:
1. The documentary sets the most immediate cause as Charles de Gaulle’s unwillingness to get France out of Vietnam after WWII for fear that France would “fall into the Russian orbit.” As for America (from the narration): “President Truman, who was being blamed by his political opponents for having ‘lost’ China, and having failed to ‘contain’ communism, approved a $23 million aid program for the French in Vietnam. The United States was no longer neutral.”
2. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was obsessed with charts and stats and graphs, “more data than could ever be adequately analyzed.” What was missing in all those metrics, according to Pentagon head of special operations Edward Lansdale was “the feelings of the Vietnamese people.”
3. In 1965, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton outlined America’s objective in the war: "70% -- to avoid a humiliating US defeat...; 20% -- to keep SVN [South Vietnam]...territory from Chinese hands; 10% -- to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.”
4. Ho Chi Minh wrote letters to Presidents Wilson and Truman (!) that various underlings most likely never delivered.
5. Donald P. Greek of the CIA: “We should have seen it as the end of the colonial era in Southeast Asia, which it really was. But instead we saw it in Cold War terms, and we saw it as a defeat for the free world that was related to the rise of China. And that was a total misreading of a pivotal event which cost us very dearly.”
6. Army adviser Sam Wilson: “We are prisoners of our own experience. And many of the things that we learned in WWII were not applicable to the war in Vietnam. We simply thought that we would go in with a sledgehammer, knock things down, clean them up and it would be all over. And it’s very, very difficult to dispel ignorance if you retain arrogance.”
7. J. William Fulbright (D. - Ark.): "[America] is quite strong enough to engage in a compromise.”
8. Diplomat George F. Kennan: “We would do better if we would show ourselves a little more relaxed and less terrified of what happens in certain of the smaller countries of Asia and Africa, and not jump around like an elephant frightened by a mouse every time these things occur.” Also: “I have fear that our thinking about this whole problem is still affected by some sort of illusions about invincibility on our part.” But, it should be noted, Kennan was the chief architect behind Soviet containment and he supported short-term intervention in Vietnam.
9. Karl Marlantes, U.S. marine: “Sometimes I think if we thought we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get in less wars.”
10. I need to learn more about the [Anna] Chennault Affair wherein Nixon halted peace talks to ensure his election as president although the Richard Nixon Foundation vehemently denies this (no, I won't link to them).
11. Most Vietnamese soldiers were poor people from the countryside.
12. Vincent Okamoto, Army soldier: “So the other reason put forth, at least in the latter days of the war, was to maintain America's international credibility with our allies, and our enemies. Uh, no 19, 20-year-old kid wants to die to maintain the credibility of Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.”
13. I never heard of Jan Howard: “My Son” before this series.
14. Nixon’s approval rating soared to 68% after his Silent Majority speech in 1969.
15. 58% of Americans thought the Kent State killings were justified.
16. 11 days after the Kent State killings, two black students (Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green) were shot and killed at Jackson State University by Mississippi Highway Patrol.
17. Journalist Neil Sheehan: “[My Lai] was different because they were killing Vietnamese point blank. With rifles and grenades. They were murdering them directly. They weren’t doing it with bombs and artillery. If they were doing it with bombs and artillery nobody would have said a word because it was going on all the time.”
18. 79% of American disagreed with Lieutenant William Calley’s guilty verdict for his role in the My Lai massacre. although the series does not suggest that some of that outrage may be due to Calley being the only person who was convicted.
19. On the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975: “[Ambassador Graham Martin] was a resolute Cold Warrior who had been appointed to reassure Thieu of continuing American backing, and his feelings had only been intensified by the death of his son in Vietnam.
An old tamarind tree stood in the center of the courtyard. Again and again, the Marines asked Ambassador Martin for permission to cut it down so as not to interfere with the lift-offs and landings they were certain would soon have to begin. He always refused. That tree was a symbol of American resolve, he said. Cutting it down would send the wrong message.”
20. On the Cambodian-Vietnamese War: “A frustrating ten-year counterinsurgency campaign followed [in 1978] that some called ‘Vietnam's Vietnam.’ Before it was over, the Vietnamese would lose some 50,000 more men, almost as many as the Americans had lost in their war.”
21. Tim O’Brien, who served in Vietnam 1969-1970, on not dodging the draft: “What prevented me from doing it? It was a fear of embarrassment, a fear of ridicule and humiliation. What my girlfriend would have thought of me and what the people in the Gobbler Cafe in downtown Worthington would have thought. The things they’d say about me: ‘What a coward and what a sissy for going to Canada.’ I would imagine my mom and dad overhearing something like that. I couldn’t summon the courage to say no to those nameless, faceless people who really in essence represented the United States of America. And I’ve had to live with it now for, you know, forty years. That’s a long time to live with a failure of conscience and a failure of nerve. And the nightmare of Vietnam for me is not the bombs and the bullets. It’s that failure of nerve that I so regret.”
1. The documentary sets the most immediate cause as Charles de Gaulle’s unwillingness to get France out of Vietnam after WWII for fear that France would “fall into the Russian orbit.” As for America (from the narration): “President Truman, who was being blamed by his political opponents for having ‘lost’ China, and having failed to ‘contain’ communism, approved a $23 million aid program for the French in Vietnam. The United States was no longer neutral.”
2. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was obsessed with charts and stats and graphs, “more data than could ever be adequately analyzed.” What was missing in all those metrics, according to Pentagon head of special operations Edward Lansdale was “the feelings of the Vietnamese people.”
3. In 1965, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton outlined America’s objective in the war: "70% -- to avoid a humiliating US defeat...; 20% -- to keep SVN [South Vietnam]...territory from Chinese hands; 10% -- to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.”
4. Ho Chi Minh wrote letters to Presidents Wilson and Truman (!) that various underlings most likely never delivered.
5. Donald P. Greek of the CIA: “We should have seen it as the end of the colonial era in Southeast Asia, which it really was. But instead we saw it in Cold War terms, and we saw it as a defeat for the free world that was related to the rise of China. And that was a total misreading of a pivotal event which cost us very dearly.”
6. Army adviser Sam Wilson: “We are prisoners of our own experience. And many of the things that we learned in WWII were not applicable to the war in Vietnam. We simply thought that we would go in with a sledgehammer, knock things down, clean them up and it would be all over. And it’s very, very difficult to dispel ignorance if you retain arrogance.”
7. J. William Fulbright (D. - Ark.): "[America] is quite strong enough to engage in a compromise.”
8. Diplomat George F. Kennan: “We would do better if we would show ourselves a little more relaxed and less terrified of what happens in certain of the smaller countries of Asia and Africa, and not jump around like an elephant frightened by a mouse every time these things occur.” Also: “I have fear that our thinking about this whole problem is still affected by some sort of illusions about invincibility on our part.” But, it should be noted, Kennan was the chief architect behind Soviet containment and he supported short-term intervention in Vietnam.
9. Karl Marlantes, U.S. marine: “Sometimes I think if we thought we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get in less wars.”
10. I need to learn more about the [Anna] Chennault Affair wherein Nixon halted peace talks to ensure his election as president although the Richard Nixon Foundation vehemently denies this (no, I won't link to them).
11. Most Vietnamese soldiers were poor people from the countryside.
12. Vincent Okamoto, Army soldier: “So the other reason put forth, at least in the latter days of the war, was to maintain America's international credibility with our allies, and our enemies. Uh, no 19, 20-year-old kid wants to die to maintain the credibility of Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.”
13. I never heard of Jan Howard: “My Son” before this series.
14. Nixon’s approval rating soared to 68% after his Silent Majority speech in 1969.
15. 58% of Americans thought the Kent State killings were justified.
16. 11 days after the Kent State killings, two black students (Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green) were shot and killed at Jackson State University by Mississippi Highway Patrol.
17. Journalist Neil Sheehan: “[My Lai] was different because they were killing Vietnamese point blank. With rifles and grenades. They were murdering them directly. They weren’t doing it with bombs and artillery. If they were doing it with bombs and artillery nobody would have said a word because it was going on all the time.”
18. 79% of American disagreed with Lieutenant William Calley’s guilty verdict for his role in the My Lai massacre. although the series does not suggest that some of that outrage may be due to Calley being the only person who was convicted.
19. On the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975: “[Ambassador Graham Martin] was a resolute Cold Warrior who had been appointed to reassure Thieu of continuing American backing, and his feelings had only been intensified by the death of his son in Vietnam.
An old tamarind tree stood in the center of the courtyard. Again and again, the Marines asked Ambassador Martin for permission to cut it down so as not to interfere with the lift-offs and landings they were certain would soon have to begin. He always refused. That tree was a symbol of American resolve, he said. Cutting it down would send the wrong message.”
20. On the Cambodian-Vietnamese War: “A frustrating ten-year counterinsurgency campaign followed [in 1978] that some called ‘Vietnam's Vietnam.’ Before it was over, the Vietnamese would lose some 50,000 more men, almost as many as the Americans had lost in their war.”
21. Tim O’Brien, who served in Vietnam 1969-1970, on not dodging the draft: “What prevented me from doing it? It was a fear of embarrassment, a fear of ridicule and humiliation. What my girlfriend would have thought of me and what the people in the Gobbler Cafe in downtown Worthington would have thought. The things they’d say about me: ‘What a coward and what a sissy for going to Canada.’ I would imagine my mom and dad overhearing something like that. I couldn’t summon the courage to say no to those nameless, faceless people who really in essence represented the United States of America. And I’ve had to live with it now for, you know, forty years. That’s a long time to live with a failure of conscience and a failure of nerve. And the nightmare of Vietnam for me is not the bombs and the bullets. It’s that failure of nerve that I so regret.”
Labels: documentaries, Ken Burns
posted by Kevin John at 9:41 PM
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