The Viet Nam War by Ken Burns

[Mowich]

I was the same age as most of the young men who were being slaughtered in that conflict and was profoundly affected by the continuous and, what I saw at the time as, pointless deaths. I was also grateful that my government had wisely chosen to stay out of it. After watching the first four episodes of the 10-part series, I have to say that my thinking at the time has been validated, completely.

Listening to Kennedy and Johnson express their doubts about entering the conflict and their continued worries once they had embarked upon a campaign against the Viet Cong, leaves me wondering how so-called intelligent men could so baldly ignore the lessons of history. Had no one bothered to study what had happened to the French after their invasion of the country and their subsequent withdrawal after finally realizing they had zero chance of prevailing against the Vietnamese?

It is no wonder to me that the US is so divided today what with the lies and cover-up of the true involvement of US forces in the conflict. It was an ignominious period in the history of that nation and one that saw the pointless deaths of millions of people - both combatants and civilians alike. It almost makes me sick to my stomach to hear the various Presidents and their advisors lie to the American public time after time after time knowing that they themselves were questioning why Americans were dying on foreign soil.

I give full credit to Ken Burns and his exemplary crew for doing a very credible job of portraying both sides of the conflict.

 

[petros]

What was it McNamara said? If we don't win by 65 we'll never win.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

What was it McNamara said?

"Neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests, that the United States is, or should or could be the global gendarm."

 

[Colpy]

Been watching.

Excellent series.

 

[petros]

Very good.

 

[MHz]

The Cambodian poppy fields were the prize and they got it before they pulled out of Vietnam in disgrace.
[youtube]LMUBWKJ5A_0&list=PL19A5A196BBF27F30[/youtube]

 

[Mowich]

Episode 5: 'This is What We Do.'

John Musgrave, a marine stationed at the DMZ - known as the Dead Marine Zone - gave what is for me one of the most riveting testimonies from an American soldier's viewpoint so far in this documentary.

"I hated them so much," Marine veteran John Musgrave says of the Viet Cong. "And I was so scared of them. Boy, was I terrified of them."

“My hatred for them was pure. Pure,” recalls John Musgrave, a Marine who was stationed close to the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam gruesomely nicknamed the Dead Marine Zone. “I made my deal with the devil, in that I said, ‘I will never kill another human being as long as I’m in Vietnam. However, I will waste as many gooks as I can find. I’ll wax as many d inks as I can find. I’ll smoke as many zips as I can find — but I ain’t gonna kill anybody. You know, turn a subject into an object. It’s Racism 101.”

As I watched this part, I was absolutely spellbound by the look in his eyes and the tremor in his voice. Through his eyes, I could almost visualize how absolutely terrifying it must have been for him and his fellow marines bombarded daily by the Viet Cong. Musgrave originally tallied every day that the base was hit on a calendar - day after day, month after month - until he gave up feeling it was pointless. He, like others who have contributed to the doc, believed that they would never go home unless it was in a casket and even then it might only be a tiny portion of their body that would be laid to its final rest.

 

[Colpy]

Episode 5: 'This is What We Do.'

John Musgrave, a marine stationed at the DMZ - known as the Dead Marine Zone - gave what is for me one of the most riveting testimonies from an American soldier's viewpoint so far in this documentary.

"I hated them so much," Marine veteran John Musgrave says of the Viet Cong. "And I was so scared of them. Boy, was I terrified of them."

“My hatred for them was pure. Pure,” recalls John Musgrave, a Marine who was stationed close to the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam gruesomely nicknamed the Dead Marine Zone. “I made my deal with the devil, in that I said, ‘I will never kill another human being as long as I’m in Vietnam. However, I will waste as many gooks as I can find. I’ll wax as many d inks as I can find. I’ll smoke as many zips as I can find — but I ain’t gonna kill anybody. You know, turn a subject into an object. It’s Racism 101.”

As I watched this part, I was absolutely spellbound by the look in his eyes and the tremor in his voice. Through his eyes, I could almost visualize how absolutely terrifying it must have been for him and his fellow marines bombarded daily by the Viet Cong. Musgrave originally tallied every day that the base was hit on a calendar - day after day, month after month - until he gave up feeling it was pointless. He, like others who have contributed to the doc, believed that they would never go home unless it was in a casket and even then it might only be a tiny portion of their body that would be laid to its final rest.

You will notice some of the early interviews were with a guy named Philip Caputo. He was a Marine officer that went in with the first Marines landed at Da Nang in 1965, and (although it doesn't mention it) he was charged in the murder of a South Vietnamese civilian sometime later......and found not guilty. His book A Rumor of War is the best book on war seen from an infantry man's eyes that I have ever read. In it, he admits his guilt in the murder. I must have read the book 10 times, which is unusual for me.

 

[MHz]

I didn't see any mention of heroin at every camp.
[youtube]HbEumEteqXs[/youtube]

 

[coldstream]

It's a very impressive.. and well balanced series.. Viet Nam with its ideals and ideology.. nationalism and colonialism .. aspirations of messianic mission and mutual cultural incomprehension.. heroism and thuggery.. nobility and debauchery.. all brought out in tragic clarity. Actually one of the first things i noticed was how great the music was from that period.. '64 to '74. Nothing like it today.

 

[Mowich]

You will notice some of the early interviews were with a guy named Philip Caputo. He was a Marine officer that went in with the first Marines landed at Da Nang in 1965, and (although it doesn't mention it) he was charged in the murder of a South Vietnamese civilian sometime later......and found not guilty. His book A Rumor of War is the best book on war seen from an infantry man's eyes that I have ever read. In it, he admits his guilt in the murder. I must have read the book 10 times, which is unusual for me.

I have read a lot about the 'war' Colpy but am always on the look-out for more material. Thanks for 'A Rumor of War'.

"The most compelling figure in this regard—I hesitate to call a conflicted Vietnam vet a future fan favorite, though I suspect he will captivate viewers the way that the hominy-toned historian Shelby Foote did in The Civil War—is John Musgrave. It would be spoiling things to reveal what he goes through, but he speaks with remarkable candor and eloquence about the terror he felt, the despair he fell into, and the pride he still takes in having served his country. I expressed my admiration of him to Burns, who shares it. “I have this recurring thought that, if some evil genie took away all our interviews but one, the one we would keep would be John Musgrave, and we’d make a different film and call it The Education of John Musgrave,” he said.

When I spoke to Musgrave on the phone—he is now a retiree who lives outside Lawrence, Kansas—I realized why he so connects: while all of the vets featured in The Vietnam War have sharp recall, Musgrave also has uncommonly immediate access to the emotions he felt as a young man. In 1967 he was an 18-year-old stationed in Con Thien—a muddy Marine combat base near the demilitarized zone—which took heavy shelling from the North Vietnamese Army. “I’m still scared of those guys,” he said, his voice quavering, when I asked him what he thought of Burns and Novick’s inclusion of North Vietnamese soldiers in the documentary.

“Scared of them in the abstract,” I asked, “or scared of them as they look in the film, as gray-haired men?”

“I’m scared of the ones who are the age that they were back then—the ones who are in my nightmares,” he said matter-of-factly. Both in the film and in conversation with me, he mentioned that he still fears darkness and sleeps with a night-light on. Yet, of the North Vietnamese old-timers who appear on-screen, he said, “I would consider it an honor to sit down with them and talk, rifleman to rifleman. They were hellaciously good soldiers. I just wish they hadn’t been so good.”

Musgrave acknowledged that, to some degree, The Vietnam War will stir things up again, reviving the usual debates and dissension. “We’re hypersensitive,” said Musgrave of his Vietnam-vet cohort. “I’ll probably take some heat for some of the things I said.”

Yet he and another featured veteran with whom I spoke, Roger Harris, expressed hope that the larger impact of the documentary will be positive and reparative—both in changing how Americans regard those who served in Vietnam and in imparting lessons for our own noisy, rancorous times. Harris, another Marine who happened to serve in Con Thien (though in a different unit—he and Musgrave don’t know each other), got the double shaft from his countrymen upon his return from his 13-month tour of duty. A poor black kid from the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, he joined up out of a combination of patriotism and cool pragmatism—“If I live, I’ll be able to get a job when I get back, and if I die, my mother will get $10,000 and be able to buy a house,” he recalled thinking—but at Logan International Airport, after a 30-hour homecoming trip, he couldn’t get a cab to pick him up. “And then, when we came home, we were ostracized, called baby-killers,” he said. “We were never called heroes. And so Ken and Lynn are telling the story, and maybe some folks will be a little more sensitive in understanding what we experienced.”

www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-vietnam-war-ken-burns-lynn-novicks-documentary

 

[TenPenny]

It's a shame that people who served were treated so badly.


The other notable thing is the demonizing and dehumanizing of 'the enemy', which is an important part of EVERY war, even today.

 

[MHz]

It's a very impressive.. and well balanced series.. Viet Nam with its ideals and ideology.. nationalism and colonialism .. aspirations of messianic mission and mutual cultural incomprehension.. heroism and thuggery.. nobility and debauchery.. all brought out in tragic clarity. Actually one of the first things i noticed was how great the music was from that period.. '64 to '74. Nothing like it today.

Illegal war protests while on CIA manufactured acid, those were the days alright.

[youtube]9va3Ms2kgZo[/youtube]
The CIA's Secret Operations in Laos During the Vietnam War


[youtube]eU6WRJko0E4[/youtube]

 

[Mowich]

It's a shame that people who served were treated so badly.

I wonder if the treatment of Vietnam Vets was a product of the anger Americans felt over the betrayal of their governments in all facets of the conflict including the inability to prevent such atrocities as the My Lai massacre which resulted in the vets as whole being tarred as 'baby killers', and that they were much easier targets of their ire then the government.

From the perspective of living here in Canada, I found it very hard to believe that of the 2,594,000 men and women who served their country in Vietnam, they were all in some way complicit in the atrocities that did take place. Even accounting for those not in actual combat.

The other notable thing is the demonizing and dehumanizing of 'the enemy', which is an important part of EVERY war, even today.

And for all the dehumanizing of the enemy that recruits on both sides went through, testimonies from some the combatants show that they were able to break through the haze of propaganda to see that they shared a common humanity.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

I have seen several of his documentaries. The one that really sticks out was his one about baseball.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_(TV_series)

I think you may enjoy it if you get the chance to watch it.

 

[MHz]

And for all the dehumanizing of the enemy that recruits on both sides went through, testimonies from some the combatants show that they were able to break through the haze of propaganda to see that they shared a common humanity.

Kent State was a protest against an illegal war started via a false flag incident rather than the practice of eliminating whole villages. That practice is eons old and is still is use today as shown by the number of children killed by drones.

You guys are determined that drugs had nothing to do with the war. You are flat out wrong, drugs are also the reason Afghanistan is under US control via a program run by the CIA.

[youtube]KMp6Jgk_SQ4[/youtube]
Inside the Drug War in Southeast Asia

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

I wonder if the treatment of Vietnam Vets was a product of the anger Americans felt over the betrayal of their governments in all facets of the conflict including the inability to prevent such atrocities as the My Lai massacre which resulted in the vets as whole being tarred as 'baby killers', and that they were much easier targets of their ire then the government.

Yes.

 

[Cliffy]

"As a Vietnam combat veteran, I would like to say that it was "a stain on the soul of America," as some have said, but I'm afraid that's not the truth. Vietnam was not an aberration, it was an expression of who we are, or at least what we have allowed our leaders to make us.They sell us war after war, on increasingly flimsier justifications, and the majority of us buys it every single time. Just look at how the so-called left in this country is eating-up the anti-Russian bullshit the party leaders, the media, and now even Hollywood is dishing out. We are the world's leading terrorist, and if all the flag waving is any indication, we're proud of it!" -- Pete Soderman

 

[DaSleeper]

 

[lone wolf]

I hope you realize a meme is the response of someone with nothing intelligent to say but has to make some kind of attention-seeking noise.

I remember Viet Nam. It was on TV all the time. Life Magazine - with constant red-white-green - was a part of my youth. I also remember a friend's brother who'd grown up on tales of honours and glory in war - and signed up in Buffalo. Most, I remember the bitter person who mostly came home.

Rest in Peace, Wayde