Was there ever any doubt?
The silence from the American left was deafening.
“This viewpoint takes it for granted that the democratically elected Diem administration in Saigon was so evil that rule by Ho Chi Minh would have to be an improvement. “
My wife has many tales of the horrors of the Diem administration.
Her school class went from 62 to 38 and no one knew where the students went.
The family next door just ‘disappeared’ one night.
When she saw the ‘transport’ vans in the 1963 episode showing students being taken away she said she remembered seeing them in person.
Her teacher helped her and other students hide so as not to be caught up in the demonstrations.
International Communist imperialism was considered a ‘good’ thing by the Left.
Just look at how the people were treated after the war.
This is the best summary the Vietnam war and Burns film I have read. Spot on!
Did they interview the napalm girl who was kept as a propaganda tool until she fled to the West?
I quickly stopped watching because it was put together by a leftist hippy. It was so far from the real Vietnam that it appears to be under influence of marijuana. It was a colossal failure and leaves out the Democrat cutting off of funds for the South to defend itself after we won the war and left the country in great shape but the cutoff of weapons and funds resulting in the slaughter of over 1 million South Vietnamese. That is a moral failure on burn’s part of indescribable magnitude.
Beautifully articulated, John.
I recorded all the episodes and watched the first one and part of the second, when reports started coming in on FR of left wing bias.
Who can bear watching more episodes if that was true? I was interested in the history of the people’s revolt against the president of Viet Nam and the history of the Vietnamese president and his family, but did not know of the corruption charges against him that bought on serious opposition in the form that became the Viet Cong. It was informative, but risking a Leftist version was a risk too painful to engage, so, I erased the rest of the series.
Thanks for the post.
Phillip Jennings and his comments on Burns couldn’t be more correct.
To put it politely Burns is an anal orifice for portraying the U.S. and the Vietnam war as he did, he took the side of the war protesters and people like Hanoi Jane and John effin Kerry as his heroes.
They and others were not heroes, they were anti-Americans.
bmfl
For anyone serious about the circumstances and a discussion about the real causes of the Vietnam War, there is a good on on youtube. The two talk about Burns documentary as well, and his background.
Tim Kelly and Joe Atwill on the Vietnam war, 2 weeks old:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8DtfbkaK4I&t=938s
Several hundred US officers and men went to prison for atrocities. Atrocities happened but were not common.
For the VC and NVA atrocities against the people of South Vietnam were policy. Rapes and murders of village officials. Youths drafted into the VC under threat that theiir families would be killed. If they deserted the families were in fact killed.
Liberals love commie murderers. Always have. Always will.
Thanks, Jim, for posting this article.
Ken Burns does a huge disservice to those of us who served in the Vietnam era.
His documentary is rubbish!
bfl
FTA: (truncated)
The Burns documentary accepts without question five pillars of the liberal view of the war:
1. There was moral equivalency between the U.S. and Communist forces, and the goals and objectives of the respective governments.
2. President Johnson and General Westmoreland accomplished nothing.
3. The wars waged in Laos and Cambodia are irrelevant and were just part of the “civil war” in South Vietnam.
4. South Vietnam was so corrupt that the North was a viable alternative.
5. America was not and has never been exceptional.
It is the raison d’être of Mr. Burns’ film to justify the cowardly and morally bankrupt left that supported the communist invasion of South Vietnam and turned its back on the murder, imprisonment, and misery of our former allies in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. One cannot be against the South Vietnamese without being for the communists who conquered and enslaved 17 million people. Only by painting the war as immoral, illegal, and un-winnable, and the South Vietnamese government as evil and inept, can the American left hope to rest in peace. It shouldn’t bet the farm on that.
Bump.....
Hey folks: Phil Jennings tells it like it is, not like the Friends of Hanoi group wants you to think it was.
Slowly but surely the truth about Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and the communist genocide there is coming out.
We started this on two fronts in the late 60’s/early 70’s, with Accuracy in Media/McDowell Luncheon group doing extensive research on the leftist-leaning reporting on the VN war by the NY Times and wash. Post.
In 1972, two of us from that group created the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee compendium study “The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam”, 1972, Sen. Judiciary Committee. Fortunately group member David Martin (RCAF during WW2, strong supporter of Mikhailovich/Chetniks in Yugoslavia) was on the SISS staff where he vast knowledge of communism was put to excellent use.
Groups like Viet Vets for a Just Peace (John O’Neill, later of the Swiftboat Veterans for the Truth About John Kerry), the Swifties in 2004, and the Radix Foundation, pursued intensive research by their members on the issues of Vietnam that the Left ignored or covered up.
Now the Vietnam Veterans for Factual History (www.vvfh.org) has picked up the ball and is producing yearly “yellowbooks” on the Vietnam War from 1963 thru 1975, with information you have never read before by those who were there in the midst of battle, diplomacy, and journalistic research.
Phil Jennings is a contributor to the VVFH books and his chapters alone are well worth reading, as you can see from his column reprinted here at FR.
Not only is “The Truth Is Out There” a guiding slogan, but “The Truth Will Out” is a final goal for those who served bravely and honorably.
Ken Burns’ film will be a “carbunicle on the backside of history” as more of the “truths” about Vietnam are revealed and published.
One day the slogan “Proud to Have Served” will be the honored norm, not the leftist smeared “fake reality”.
Did Burns mention that this was Johnson’s war or that Kennedy had the President of South Vietnam assassinated?