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Since the first two episodes of Ken Burns’ Vietnam, there hasn’t been much comment here. Since Stan ran to Canada then came slinking back, I’m probably the only other one old enough in this forum to have been through the entire thing – ‘65 to ’76… and the last 6y of it as a soldier.
I watched the 10th and last episode just now, again, because I didn’t think I absorbed the full impact of it last week when it ran. There is still the unmistakable idea that Burns wants to leave you with that has been present since the first two episodes aired: Think long and hard about getting involved in a war where the outcome and all the consequence, intended or otherwise, are not clear; and, oh, BTW, they never will be.
In this last episode, Burns wants the viewer to fully understand how badly the people of Vietnam suffered and how much the United States contributed to that suffering during the very end of the Nixon and then Ford administrations. Sobering.
That America did not achieve victory in this particular military undertaking is of little consequence compared to the damage that was done to the US reputation of standing arm and arm with others who seek freedom and democratic governance. America bailed on the South Vietnamese – plain and simple. All the sensible reasons that have been offered over time for doing that in retrospect were short sighted and mostly baseless or simply made up to save face.
During the tragic 4 or 5 months, in late 1974 to March of 1975 when the US shamelessly slithered out of that country, leaving hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese to suffer at the hands of the Communists in the North, America demonstrated its weakness and lack of resolve.
For me and like the CIA officer stationed in Saigon from 1970 until he left in late ‘74 who shared his thoughts of the Vietnam war in this documentary, we were somehow detached from it, like looking out of a B52 bomb bay door and watching tons of ordnance fall to the ground then going about whatever business we had to tend to.
The Burns Vietnam piece, much like he brought the horrors of the Civil War to our consciousness, brought home to me that while the US may have had good intentions in 1965 and through the immense military buildup from 1967 to 1972, the war itself was horribly mismanaged if not bravely fought. Moreover, the negotiations to end it and what America did to the South Vietnamese, by it’s inaction, as the North Vietnamese invaded and produced the fall of Saigon and surrender of the South Vietnamese Government, stands, in my view, as America’s darkest and most shameful moment. If Burns wanted viewers to get that point, he succeeded with me.
Last year, I visited HoChiMinh City (formerly Saigon), Hue and Danang (I spent time here in ‘72). It remains a beautiful country with kind people who still look up to America and are incredibly welcoming to Americans, despite what we did to them and failed to do for them. The guide I hired to take us around was a young man, in his early 20s. He was Catholic and staunchly anti-communist. I’m reasonably sure an elder in his family was either a government official in the south or an ARVN soldier. Some of his family lived in the US; some still in and around Saigon (his term for the city and plainly so). He was quite candid and surprisingly open especially after I told him I had been a pilot in the Vietnam War and flew out of Danang airbase.
The 8h tour and the personal interchange I had the privilege of experiencing with this young Vietnamese man showed me that things in Vietnam we’re OK and at the same time were not OK at all. There is a palpable tension there between the average citizen and the North Vietnamese Communist appartachik. Yet there is this sort of euphoric resilience that makes me even more upset about our conduct in this part of the world that we essentially abandoned – this having only been more fully understood because of Burn’s excellent documentary – Vietnam. If you haven’t seen the whole thing do it or at least watch the last 2 or 3 episodes for full effect.
I watched the 10th and last episode just now, again, because I didn’t think I absorbed the full impact of it last week when it ran. There is still the unmistakable idea that Burns wants to leave you with that has been present since the first two episodes aired: Think long and hard about getting involved in a war where the outcome and all the consequence, intended or otherwise, are not clear; and, oh, BTW, they never will be.
In this last episode, Burns wants the viewer to fully understand how badly the people of Vietnam suffered and how much the United States contributed to that suffering during the very end of the Nixon and then Ford administrations. Sobering.
That America did not achieve victory in this particular military undertaking is of little consequence compared to the damage that was done to the US reputation of standing arm and arm with others who seek freedom and democratic governance. America bailed on the South Vietnamese – plain and simple. All the sensible reasons that have been offered over time for doing that in retrospect were short sighted and mostly baseless or simply made up to save face.
During the tragic 4 or 5 months, in late 1974 to March of 1975 when the US shamelessly slithered out of that country, leaving hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese to suffer at the hands of the Communists in the North, America demonstrated its weakness and lack of resolve.
For me and like the CIA officer stationed in Saigon from 1970 until he left in late ‘74 who shared his thoughts of the Vietnam war in this documentary, we were somehow detached from it, like looking out of a B52 bomb bay door and watching tons of ordnance fall to the ground then going about whatever business we had to tend to.
The Burns Vietnam piece, much like he brought the horrors of the Civil War to our consciousness, brought home to me that while the US may have had good intentions in 1965 and through the immense military buildup from 1967 to 1972, the war itself was horribly mismanaged if not bravely fought. Moreover, the negotiations to end it and what America did to the South Vietnamese, by it’s inaction, as the North Vietnamese invaded and produced the fall of Saigon and surrender of the South Vietnamese Government, stands, in my view, as America’s darkest and most shameful moment. If Burns wanted viewers to get that point, he succeeded with me.
Last year, I visited HoChiMinh City (formerly Saigon), Hue and Danang (I spent time here in ‘72). It remains a beautiful country with kind people who still look up to America and are incredibly welcoming to Americans, despite what we did to them and failed to do for them. The guide I hired to take us around was a young man, in his early 20s. He was Catholic and staunchly anti-communist. I’m reasonably sure an elder in his family was either a government official in the south or an ARVN soldier. Some of his family lived in the US; some still in and around Saigon (his term for the city and plainly so). He was quite candid and surprisingly open especially after I told him I had been a pilot in the Vietnam War and flew out of Danang airbase.
The 8h tour and the personal interchange I had the privilege of experiencing with this young Vietnamese man showed me that things in Vietnam we’re OK and at the same time were not OK at all. There is a palpable tension there between the average citizen and the North Vietnamese Communist appartachik. Yet there is this sort of euphoric resilience that makes me even more upset about our conduct in this part of the world that we essentially abandoned – this having only been more fully understood because of Burn’s excellent documentary – Vietnam. If you haven’t seen the whole thing do it or at least watch the last 2 or 3 episodes for full effect.
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