Posted on 07/17/2017 7:08:59 AM PDT by rktman
PBS is planning to run a new documentary series this September on the Vietnam War, produced and written by Ken Burns. Burns is a left-wing "historian" and documentary film producer with a history of having his politics shape the narrative of the story he is telling, with a number of resulting inaccuracies.
Ken Burns correctly identifies the Vietnam War as being the point at which our society split into two diametrically opposed camps. He is also correct in identifying a need for us to discuss this aspect of our history in a civil and reflective manner. The problem is that the radical political and cultural divisions of that war have created alternate perceptions of reality, if not alternate universes of discourse. The myths and propaganda of each side make rational discourse based on intellectual honesty and goodwill difficult or impossible. The smoothly impressive visual story Burns will undoubtedly deliver will likely increase that difficulty. He has done many popular works in the past, some of which have been seriously criticized for inaccuracies and significant omissions, but we welcome the chance of a balanced treatment of the full history of that conflict. We can only wait and watch closely when it goes public.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Is this a great country or what? Why all the bitching?
Mostly because Democrats are hypocrites.
However, his series on WWII was utterly unwatchable. It was like reading the diary of a vacuous teenaged girl, and about as deep.
Mr Burns should stick to simple, non-contextual topics like sports.
Thanks for the correction. It was still a Democrat who escalated it into a full war and it took Ike’s VP to eventually end it.
You are correct. Started a little slow but picked up speed over time. ;-) I shook Ike’s hand as a little kid when he came to Carmel/Monterey in the early 50’s. I think I was in like the 2nd grade or something.
Makes you wonder how he will reconcile himself to the fact that the Communists are (and were) brutal murders on a massive scale. They make the Nazis looks small in comparison.
True, and they should be called out on their hypocrisy.
When Ike left office, we had about 900 men in Vietnam as advisors to the South Vietnamese Army. By the time JFD was killed, that number had risen to about 16,000.
Truman sent the OSS to Vietnam 1945.
Colonel A. Peter Dewey could be considered the first casualty in Vietnam
Interesting read here
http://apjjf.org/-Geoffrey-Gunn/3137/article.html
Agreed! And they should be beat over the head with it until they relent and admit it that they are wrong (either now or then). Unfortunately, the MSM refuse to hold them to task because they are in bed with them.
Bwahahahahaha!!!
Used to be even libs would get a laugh out of bits like that. If anything it accurately skewers Burns’ weirdly primitive “documentaries”.
Interesting too that we took over from the French. Probably French colonialism?
Burns has been advertising his Vietnam documentary a good six years. PBS has reruned every single series he did. I kept wondering why he wanted to do another series on Vietnam. I don’t know if I can trust him. But PBS did Vietnam A Television History in 1983.
his jazz history is also awesome, and I am enjoying his dust bowl right now.
that said...I would like someone with knowledge to contribute here...they say absolutely with no equivocation that the dust bowl was 100% man made. they give good evidence for that, for sure...but still, it has a little bit of a propagandish feel to it.
would anyone here be able to clarify what I suspect is the truth, that it was an ecological disaster which the wheat rush did not help, but which wasn’t 100% manmade? I’d like to hear something on that..
A great classic!
Thanks for the link.
I’ve seen better more accurate documentaries done on the Civil War. What separates Burn’s series from the others was the fact he it gotten underwritten & shown on PBS, so he got to make the bigger PR splash to the mostly non-reading uninterested in history (unless spoon-fed & jazzed up with nice music! Which he did!) TV crowd. Now this crowd does think its sophisticated & intellectual since it watches PBS. Then the other part of the Burn’s documentary that makes it stand out was the late Shelby Foote. He made an otherwise mediocre series worth watching.
No, only 30% of it
Another 30% will be on the “unfairness” to Latinos (see e.g. the VN Memorial Statue”
The other 30% will be on the “unfairness” to the VC and N Vietnamese army
Ike sent career military, officers, often volunteers, after Dien Bien Phu, concerned about another “domino falling”. This was the height of the cold war, remember.
Using that fact to argue that he “started the war” is tenuous at best. We had “advisors” all over our hemisphere and all over the world then.
Lyndon Baines Johnson escalated this proxy conflict between superpowers, fired up the draft and responded each time General Westmoreland requested more troops.
Even Kennedy only sent advisors, the Green Berets were his idea.
This was Johnson’s war. Our troops did their jobs and followed their orders. LBJ and the `rats were the loosers: the same fierce hawks who ginned-up the war, like RFK, then became peaceful, love-dove hippies. We never lost a battle.
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