Posted on 10/18/2017 6:25:22 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
The only positive thing I can say about Ken Burns’ documentary on the Vietnam War is this — if it is the best the left has, we may blessedly have heard the last of them. The arguments Mr. Burns presents are weak, biased, and insulting. The documentary is scripted to evoke sorrow and moral indignation over what was presented as American error, ineptness, and lack of moral purpose.
The narrative counterposes happy and earnest winners (the communists) with sad and angst-ridden losers (America and the South Vietnamese). It deemed only such perspectives worthy of inclusion. Mr. Burns fails to find even one American or South Vietnamese veteran who wholly supported the war, was proud to have appeared in arms, and sickened by the United States’ abandonment its freedom-seeking ally.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of us.
No doubt, too, there were North Vietnamese who are critical of the brutality of the communist conduct of the war, but Mr. Burns can’t find them either. We have no way of knowing whether the happy and earnest communist veterans who did appear in the documentary participated in the war crimes — the execution of thousands of civilians — in Hue or any of the countless acts of North Vietnamese-sponsored terrorism.
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.
No there wasn’t. Communist North Vietnam invaded a South Vietnam striving for democracy. The South Vietnamese posed no threat to the North other than by their example. The North had no inherent right to conquer South Vietnam, and the South Vietnamese had no obligation to “vote themselves communist” in 1955....
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
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!
I’m a Vietnam combat vet, helicopter pilot. I thought this s*** of the U.S. as bad guy was over by the end of the 1970’s.
Ken Burns needs confronting, to put it very mildly.
Jane Fonda needs croaking. 45 years overdue.
Thanks for emailing it to me.
bfl
Ky and laterThieu were credible leaders in a war torn land, but the inconstancy of American policy hamstrung their effectiveness in prosecuting the war.
Thanks for your service!
You’re right on, and BHO is damn lucky he didn’t cash in his chips from AIDS.
“I recall only that Diem regime was stable, despite some self-immolating monks”
We’re you there. I think not.
You are most welcome.
The Vietnam “issue” needs to be settled.
Burns has not been helpful.
Thank you for your service.
“. . . this s*** of the U.S. as bad guy. . . .” You know, and I know, and millions of our countrymen and women know, that the USA is the GOOD GUY!
This “bad guy” hangover will NEVER be over until and unless the spotlight of truth is shined on the LIEberals who infest our government, schools and media, and a majority of Americans come to understand that WE CONSERVATIVES ARE THE GOOD GUYS!
THE USA IS THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD TO LIVE, WORK, RAISE A FAMILY IN AND PLAY IN!
When the LIEberals are exposed for the FRauds they are and are driven FRom the field of battle, we’ll have wone!
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.....
Vietnam was VERY corrupt.
Thank you, and thank you for your service.
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”.
Rita: The Viet Cong, National Liberation Front was created in 1959 in Hanoi and then publicly paraded before fawning western media hacks and ignoramuses.
However, while the NFLSV was officially unveiled on Hanoi Radion on Jan. 29, 1961, the controlling Vietnamese communist body inside of it, the People’s Revolutionary Party was announced for the first time on Hanoi Radio, Jan. 18, 1982.
All of this history on communism in Vietnam is found in “Studies In Comparative Communism: An Interdisciplinary Journal”, January 1969, “The National United Front in Vietnam”, by P.J. Honey, noted British scholar on Vietnam.
The few remaining VC leaders after 1975/76 were either killed, jailed or fled into exile as Hanoi absorbed their “child” the NLF/Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG - Hayden/Fonda’ love child) into the Lao Dong Party (Communist Party of Vietnam).
That was the plan all along yet the Western liberals, aided by academic and media Marxists, fell for the “front” concept despite the lessons of the “united fronts” of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s created by both Moscow and Peking, with Hanoi working both sides of the Marxist ideological continuum.
Hope this helps to explain what the mainstream media dn Marxist professors don’t tell you.
MM, Vietnam/Cambodia journalist, 1970
Does she have any nice stories about the benevolence of Ho Chi Minh?
Thank you very much, *Max!
NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND YOUR QUESTION.
You seem to be fixated on the shortcomings of the regime in South Vietnam. Not a single post about corruption or human rights violations in the North.
“You seem to be fixated on the shortcomings of the regime in South Vietnam. Not a single post about corruption or human rights violations in the North.”
You weren’t there. My wife was.
Don’t label me. Look for the truth. If you want to discuss we can but I am not sure you can handle it.
Diem’s regime was VERY corrupt.
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