Posted on 09/21/2017 9:20:30 AM PDT by oh8eleven
Most of the interviewees talk in the lugubrious tones of the defeated. We all know the story ends badly. But when it’s over, we aren’t told why we lost. The music is more memorable than the pictures, and the pictures are more compelling than the narration. We are deluged by sights and sounds but not enlightened as to cause and effect.
The film casts the antiwar movement in a moderately favorable light. Are the protesters the real heroes here? What about the valiant US soldiers, 75 percent of whom were volunteers?
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
When Fritz Hollings (D) toured Vietnam, Westmoreland told him that they were killing Vietnamese at a ratio of 10-1.
Hollings corrected him saying that Americans don't give a damn about the 10, they care about the 1. Turned out to be right.
Americans got real tired real quick of Washington randomly selecting whose kids were going to have their lives turned inside out by being drafted and getting shot at.
Seems each docu he makes is a little worse than the last. The first three, Civil War, Baseball and Jazz were pretty good. But they just continued to go downhill. Now they all seem to follow the same cookie cutter template and I generally get bored.
“... Washington randomly selecting whose kids were going to have their lives turned inside out by being drafted and getting shot at...”
OK-and the alternative is...?
And why are we surprised? I’ve not watched it nor care to. His so-called documentaries are slanted and biased towards liberalism; conveniently leaves out a lot of history that proves otherwise to his thinking.
The war would have ended in 4 to 6 months by invading and taking the North and extending the front across Laos facing China against infiltration from surviving NV troops and the Chinese.
Lame brain and idiot LBJ was wrong. The Soviet Union would not have started a nuke war over Vietnam. They ain’t that stupid.
It would have stabilized the South and the North could have been pacified and the probable reunion of the country, but the US would have to commit troops for an undetermined period to keep the peace.
Not having a draft when there is not even a declaration of war?
Not ending the draft in Fall 45' was the biggest mistake America made in the post war era.
>They’re the real reason we lost the war.<
Not entirely...the demonrats in Congress, along with not so few Repub’s, were the final reason the war was lost.
When I left, that war was won.
“I can’t wait to see how he handles the Tet Offensive.”
That will be the litmus test for me.
I was drafted during the Vietman War. I blamed then and now our cowardly Congress for not declaring it what it was -a war, not a “conflict”. I also blame the media and Cronkite for his hysteria after our complete victory during Tet. I believe later the commanding general for the enemy said he was surprised that we withdrew after such a victory. The media was lying to us even then.
The war was never going to end without regime change in the North and Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon were utterly unwilling to face that.
What is surprising here is that anyone would be surprised that a Left Wing PBS Director such an Burns would offer up anything else--
Ken who? Is that the guy who won a ton of money of Jeopardy or some other liberal named Ken?
The stated goal in SE Asia was to stop the domino effect of countries in the region falling to communism. That was accomplished. So did we really lose the war?
We should have decided to win. democrats decided we should lose instead.
We were betrayed by the demonrats.
For younger freepers: the Democrats, led by FDR wannabe and scoundrel Lyndon “Stolen Valor” Johnson, ginned-up the Vietnam war.
Despite saying, “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” - Lyndon B. Johnson, the Democrats loved dishonest double-talk, even then.
Then ... they lost interest (”War is hard ... “) and bailed, started blaming Nixon and back-biting our troops & CICh until Congress cut funding.
Like Pepperidge Farms, those of us alive then—we remember. We Americans didn’t lose a major battle, starting with the Ia Drang valley in `65.
Our troops were the willing, led by the unknowing, and did the impossible for the ungrateful.
This is all on the `rats. They own the Vietnam debacle.
Laos and Cambodia DID fall to the Communists in 75'
I watched parts of it and while they give the “official” NVA side the it surprised me how they slammed the “peace movement”
It said the peaceniks didn’t grow until the lower classes run out of warm bodies and blacks started to grumble about their losses. This meant the college aged middle class started getting drafted and they didn’t want to go.
It wasn’t so much “anti war” as “don’t mess with my lifestyle” protest.
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