Burns & Novick: The Vietnam War

[PodcastTown]

9 hours ago, SusanSunflower said:

A lot of the musical choices (from the very first episode) took me "out of the story" because they were at odds with the timeline, and/or had no connection to Vietnam.  Let It Be was released in 1970.  I don't know any "greater significance" to the song beyond Paul McCartney's happy marriage to Linda.  Paul has never been particularly "deep" or socially conscious (and has been rather notoriously nitpicky/resentful) ... I always took this song as aspirational to his own life and likely the breakup to the Beatles ...  and have always thought it was deeply personal and not generic or "universal" or deep.  IMHO, Paul is at his best taken at face value ... I didn't like the series closing on that song for those reasons -- it was released 1970 when the war ended years later; it suggested some perhaps aspirational spiritual reconciliation that both the war and Paul's future belie. 

Having nothing to do with Vietnam or my own interpretation, here's what Paul had to say:

https://mattandjojang.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/the-story-behind-paul-mccartneys-song-let-it-be/

We project onto things we like whatever story and congruence we want to believe in ... 

from John Wayne/Liberty Valance:   When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.  

I' think that Burns & Company did more of that than I would have preferred.  Ymmv. 

ETA:  in 1970-71,  I thought with the release of his solo album, that Paul McCartney with his non-matieralist, happy marriage had "won the lottery" ... I thought the song strangely religious (I'm not) and "simple" even saccharine, but I too "love it"  in the sense of remembering what it meant THEN ... to me, that Paul was safe and happy in domestic bliss -- and that made me happy. 

 

 I don't know, but I thought closing out the episode with Let It Be was excellent. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

On 9/30/2017 at 11:46 PM, Bastet said:

As with John McCain and John Kerry, “The Vietnam War” filmmakers did not interview Fonda for the series. In an interview with IndieWire, Novick said, “These are public figures who have had their say many times. And we didn’t feel we needed to give them another platform to burnish their reputations in whatever way they want. And also, these are extremely polarizing figures, and we were really trying to tell the story in a way that an audience could come to it with an open mind, and not feel that we were favoring one particular perspective or another. And so it seemed like it wasn’t up to us to give any of those people the platform to tell their story yet again. They’ve told it many, many times.”

Interesting quote by Novick-since I’ve never seen the “many many times” that McCain and Kerry have spoken about their time in Vietnam aside from stories and documentaries that stated they served and that McCain was a POW. And of course Kerry’s testimony before Congress.

Is Ron Kovic still alive? I would have thought they would mention him as I believe he was part of the VVAW.

I knew Nixon was slime and an unrepentant racist crook, but My God. No words. 

Kushner made me cry buckets and I’m sad his marriage didn’t survive.

Watching the last episode now and wow, I’ve just realized I’m not tense nor is my heart pounding and aside from the Senate hearings that led to Nixon’s impeachment vote, no anger. 

I just love Musgrave and as someone up thread ( @LADreamr maybe?) I could listen to him read the phonebook. By episode 8, I could identify each of the Vets who had spoken throughout the series: Marlantes, Musgrave, Harris, Okamoto, O’Brien, Kushner. And Mogie’s mother and sister before their faces were shown.

If I have one criticism-it’s the color of the subtitles that were used when translating the words of the Vietnamese-it was difficult to read them against some of the background at times.

I am definitely getting this on dvd-though it’s not something I can ever binge watch. It’s too hard—painful and gut wrenching.

Edited October 2, 2017 by GHScorpiosRule
Because spelling is IMPORTANT

[GHScorpiosRule]

Okay, I spoke too soon. There was still some things to get angry and ragey about.

I didn’t get the sense that the last two episodes were rushed, but I would have liked to learn what ALL the Vets who spoke on this series-are doing today. Marlantes broke my heart when he told us of his reaction to a car horn and finding himself about close to kicking in the windshield, and not knowing why. Then saying and talking about PTSD. I would have liked to hear the others’ experience as well but then felt guilty because it’s none of my fucking business. Though Musgrave did tell the story how his dogs saved him from killing himself.

And I also thought ending it with “Let it Be” was excellent. At the same time, I would have loved to hear Simon and Garfunkel’s ”Bridge Over Troubled Waters” in its entirety.

And now at the first chance I get-next Saturday, I’m going to visit the Wall.

[txhorns79]

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Novick said, “Everyone we spoke to was happy to say something about Jane Fonda, and we did have a variety of perspectives, but we thought he was able to explain the anger, and also in his mind, the origins… of the betrayal that people felt because they had idolized and fantasized about her.

I always felt like that kind of anger is rooted in sexism.  Essentially, they are angry because she wasn't willing to humor their fantasies of what she should be like, i.e. the gorgeous beauty queen of Barbarella, and instead she's revealed that she's a real person with real views and they don't necessarily align with those of the men who wanted to bed her.  And I'm glad she was just a small part of one episode.  Ultimately, I think the people who focused on Jane Fonda did so because it was easier to criticize her, than it was to face the reality of where the war was headed and what that really meant for the people who had died and their families.  But Jane Fonda and her story were only a very small part of the story of the war, and I am glad they focused on people from both sides whose voices we rarely have heard.   

Edited October 2, 2017 by txhorns79

[Bastet]

During the U.S. occupation of Iraq following 9/11, I was often reminded of the attitude instilled in - and, let's be real, embraced by - many of the American soldiers in Vietnam.  Know absolutely nothing about the culture of the people you are fighting alongside, let alone against, view everyone in that area of the world as one in the same, and racistly reduce them to something sub-human in order to justify your actions.  Part five illustrated that, no better than when Musgrave said that after his first kill, he vowed never to kill another human being in Vietnam -- but he'd kill every [insert choice of ethnic slur here] he could.

Ah, LBJ, sliding further and further away from the parts of him that were good.  "We talk too damn much about civil liberties."  Screw you.  And shuffling McNamara off to the World Bank because he expressed increasing doubt, but screw him, too, because he kept quiet about his change of heart for 30 years instead of speaking up when it could have done some good to hear one of the primary architects the war say, "Wait; this has all gone terribly wrong."

The number of fatalities and serious injuries per incident is truly staggering by this point.  And things like their rifles routinely jamming, or them being sent on a trail that includes a bridge their equipment is incapable of crossing, forcing a retreat right into ambush, or being sent in to retrieve the bodies (always the body count) of enemy soldiers they knew were just bait to lure them in, their own planes dropping bombs on them, etc. - of course that led to thinking, "I'm never getting out of here alive."  I think Harris' conversation with his mom summed it up best, when he told her they were losing the war, people were dying right and left, and he was likely not coming home, she told him he'd be okay because he's special, and he told her, "Everybody's mother thinks they're special; I'm putting pieces of special people in bags."

The number of people who wrote Musgrave off as unable to be saved - and for him to be lucid, hearing it all - is really something.  As is the story of how he got out, with an 18-year-old fellow Marine in his first firefight, having watched the first guy who tried to drag him out get killed for his efforts, and jumping in to take over.

Is the two-minute mention of rape as a war crime all we're going to get on the subject?

I think I need some sleep before I delve into the Tet Offensive. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

5 hours ago, Bastet said:

Is the two-minute mention of rape as a war crime all we're going to get on the subject?

Pretty much. And it will be dismissed as an aberration. Until John Kerry shows up. But even his retelling of what was done is brushed off and dismissed.

[Spartan Girl]

8 hours ago, Bastet said:

Is the two-minute mention of rape as a war crime all we're going to get on the subject?

Ugh.  Seriously.  I couldn't help being reminded of the movie Casualties of War, and the real-life incident that it was based on.  Some poor Vietnamese girl got raped and murdered by U.S. soldiers, and when the one soldier tried to report it, the superior officers just wanted to sweep it under the rug, just like they tried to do with My Lai.

 I have nothing but respect for soldiers and veterans, but these acts were despicable and had nothing to do with patriotism whatsoever.  And the "following orders" excuse doesn't mean jack; the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg used that same excuse.

[GHScorpiosRule]

8 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Ugh.  Seriously.  I couldn't help being reminded of the movie Casualties of War, and the real-life incident that it was based on.  Some poor Vietnamese girl got raped and murdered by U.S. soldiers, and when the one soldier tried to report it, the superior officers just wanted to sweep it under the rug, just like they tried to do with My Lai.

If not for the reporter Daniel Stout, who witnessed it and even reported it, and was told to STFU basically, I don't think we would ever have known. There were at least two instances during this series, that they talked about raping and killing girls. And no one did jack shit.

[shapeshifter]

9 hours ago, Bastet said:

Is the two-minute mention of rape as a war crime all we're going to get on the subject?

I too thought this felt "glossed over," but then I recalled a Vietnam vet who I had interviewed in the early 90s telling of how the guy who slept next to him had a human skull that he used as a candle holder. He didn't say anything else about it. I got the impression that simply stating the fact was all he could say and that the listener should be able to understand the enormity of it.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I don't know if they showed his name, but was that Mike Wallace who interviewed the one Vet who had admitted to the rape and murders at My Lai? And all he could do was shrug his shoulders and say "Orders?"

And I'm surprised the series didn't talk about Bob Hope and his USO tours he did to entertain our troops. I know when I was recently rewatching JAG, they had this one episode set in 1968 Christmas, and the actors were playing most of the real life entertainers like Diana Ross, Phyllis Diller, but they also edited in clips of Bob Hope and showing the real troops that were being entertained. You could tell by the quality of the film. I don't know, I guess I wanted to know if seeing him helped with morale or anything.

[friendperidot]

Going to go back to my feeling that Let It Be was one of the few songs that were perfect for the ending, Bridge Over Troubled Waters would have been good too. So what if it was released in 1970, it was part of the soundtrack of our lives, those of us who lived that time. And yes, Paul McCartney can be trite and commercial, he's actually quite astute about it and has made millions. I don't begrudge him a perfect marriage to Linda, but it probably wasn't perfect, because they are humans, but from the outside looking in, it seemed pretty damn good. Paul McCartney has some songs I despise, Silly Little Love Songs being among the top of those. But sometimes in simplicity of lyric and music is beauty and truth. Simplicity allows for the listener to hear what they want or sometimes what they need. Paul said that Mother Mary in the song was his Mother, so I'll take him at his word. 

For me, there is some truth and beauty to Let It Be. So now, I'll just Let It Be.

YMMV and that is part of the truth and beauty for the listener.

[SusanSunflower]

I might have chosen "What's so Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding"  -- either the original (1974) or Elvis Costello's later revival  (1978) ... still relevant, still challenging. 

I don't like it when very personal songs are turned into anthems (see also: Leonard Cohen's Hallulujah which is pretty much totally unrecognizable from the original) ... See Also Joni Mitchell's Woodstock (she wasn't there) which is used (and was used in this) as a prophetically foreboding. 

The Vietnam War has been a gaping wound -- politically, spiritually, morally and -- most importantly -- personally, for thousands of vets ... "Let it Be" is simplistic pablum for those with PTSD ... (Note "Let it be" morphs from Paul's happy surrender/acceptance to a demand or exhortation that others should "Let it Be" already ... as in "just stop").  There's still lots of anger and pain and sadness ... Bridge Over Troubled Water would asked "who/what is this entity that is the voice of this song?"  

There was a lot of focus on Veterans -- well and good -- even deserved, but the lessons of Vietnam extend beyond "thank you for your service" and "honoring the troops" ...  "we shoulda given them a parade!!! ... America seems unwilling to learn anything beyond the personal ... be nicer to Veterans ... so be it.  

eta:  What's so Funny is still part of Costello's set list, also often Springsteen ... very much deliberately an anthem ... "Where are the strong?  Who are the trusted?"   http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc3xp62f 

used tiny url to avoid big picture youtube -- just one of many versions. 

Edited October 3, 2017 by SusanSunflower

[shapeshifter]

For me, this series has become a filter of sorts. For instance, when I read an article on the life and death of Tom Petty that didn't mention Vietnam, I immediately thought: What was his lottery number? The 1970 ranking is here: http://www.historynet.com/whats-your-number.htm If my boyfriend had been a year younger, he wouldn't have gone.

[GHScorpiosRule]

One song I thought they would play, would be Blowin' in the Wind by Joan Baez. On the whole, I did like all the song choices they used for this series.

[rcc]

19 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I don't know if they showed his name, but was that Mike Wallace who interviewed the one Vet who had admitted to the rape and murders at My Lai? And all he could do was shrug his shoulders and say "Orders?"

And I'm surprised the series didn't talk about Bob Hope and his USO tours he did to entertain our troops. I know when I was recently rewatching JAG, they had this one episode set in 1968 Christmas, and the actors were playing most of the real life entertainers like Diana Ross, Phyllis Diller, but they also edited in clips of Bob Hope and showing the real troops that were being entertained. You could tell by the quality of the film. I don't know, I guess I wanted to know if seeing him helped with morale or anything.

My husband said the troops enjoyed Bob Hope and his tour. He saw them at Camp Eagle and had a crush on Joey Heatherton after seeing her there.

I was disappointed that the series didn't mention the USO tours.

[Mumbles]

On 9/24/2017 at 9:15 PM, Calvada said:

wonder why PBS insists on showing these documentaries within 2 weeks.  Why not show a couple episodes per week?  I find them really gut-wrenching to watch, plus adding 18 hours to my TV schedule in a lot.  I've only gotten through 3 episodes thus far, and I'm sure it will take me about a month to get through all of this.  

I agree. Each episode is so dense and needs to be digested. I'm almost done with my initial viewing (my DVR is relieved) but I just saw that my local PBS channel will be showing them weekly. So I'll be watching them again, now for more comprehension.

Quote

 was surprised by this too, and what struck me was that it was an absolute mirror image of the U.S. - the children of the wealthy rarely served (unless they volunteered) while poor working class kids got drafted

Just goes to prove that war is disproportionately horrific for poor people.

Quote

I always knew Nixon was crooked and corrupt but I hadn't realized he was truly evil until this series and this episode.

Just as vile as him is Henry Kissinger and the true tragedy is that that ghoul is still acceptable in society and serves as an "eminence grise." I mean, there were presidential candidates last year who bragged they consulted him for advice. Christopher Hitchens was correct. He is a war criminal, between this war and the assassination of Allende.

I just finished Ep 9 and even though I intellectually appreciated that Kushner made it out, I was so spent listening to his account of the American military rep at the prisoner exchange weeping as he hugged him, the flight home, the photos of the families greeting their fathers and husbands.  

[MVFrostsMyPie]

I feel like I could watch another 18 hours about this. Okay, maybe 9. I think I'll have to rewatch some episodes. 

I liked the use of music, including Let it Be at the end. That song makes me a little weepy every time I hear it (although I admit I listen to the version from Across the Universe with Carol Woods and Timothy Mitchum more often - https://youtu.be/ShNnEDb4wFA).

This documentary made me even more depressed because I kept drawing parallels to current times. Sigh. Damn it, I'm feeling weepy again. 

[walnutqueen]

I must be a glutton for punishment, because I could marathon this series several times again.  I've managed to DVR the first 7 episodes (what the hell, KPBS, for suddenly stopping your late night reruns?), but have to wait for the last 3 when the weekly PBS re-airing catches up.  Then I intend to watch the whole damned thing in one sitting.

Yes, it is THAT good.

[shapeshifter]

I had missed the third episode and just caught it this evening. Like the guy in the interview, it made me so sad to realize that three years before he (and my boyfriend) went there, they knew it was unwinable and were advised to negotiate but chose to send more soldiers instead. 
I remember explaining the Domino Theory to my older sister's college boyfriend. He started to scoff at it, but then I showed him a picture of my boyfriend, and he just said, "I can see why you're attracted to him."

[wonderwoman]

A contrary perspective from Salon:

salon vietnam

[Brattinella]

Yeah I don't read that website.

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, wonderwoman said:

A contrary perspective from Salon:

salon vietnam

I've only watched through part five so far - when this aired, I was splitting my time between my house and my parents' house (they were out of town for 2-1/2 weeks, so I was cat sitting), and I opted to record it at their house, figuring I'd have time to watch the whole thing before they came home and thus it was six of one, half dozen of another, but it didn't work out that way, so now I'm going to finish via the weekly airings - but if this:
 

Quote

 

What levels of avoidance of difficult questions and important debates would that require for us to overcome these divisions that the war spawned? That’s what I would suggest was the reason they avoided any effort to connect the debates of the Vietnam War to the present. Not a single mention of Afghanistan or Iraq or our 21st-century wars, which bear so much resemblance, in many ways, to Vietnam. We have no debate about that.

This gets at my most serious criticism of the film. That, in a way, as troubling as a lot of this great footage is, of battle after battle after battle — and you do see depictions of people who have died and are terribly wounded — it does somehow put that war safely in the past, in the rear-view mirror.

 

is true, that will be a disappointment I share.  And this:
 

Quote

 

I do think it reinforces, among other things, a really false memory of the antiwar movement.

Center stage is given over to American combat veterans. They’re the real stars of the show. They can speak with moral and political authority because of a whole host of editorial decisions, and there are really only one or two people who are interviewed on camera who were members of what I would call the civilian antiwar movement. That is, they had no family or personal connection to the military.

There are not, to say the least, particularly effective voices that give you a sense of how profound the antiwar critique was and how it was founded on deep convictions. There is the implication in a number of places in the film that the antiwar movement was driven primarily by self-interested desire to stay out of the war, and also that the antiwar movement commonly denigrated American military veterans. I think both of those ideas are misleading at best. If there had been a greater variety of antiwar voices I think we would have gotten a deeper sense of the sheer power of their ethical and principled stance.

 

is already my major gripe.

Other than this exchange on false equivalence:
 

Quote

 

As you point out, the film is very careful. Every time there will be a war crime committed by the United States side, they’ll very carefully point out a war crime committed by the other side. You can just predict it. Even in Episode 1, they said, “. . . but the Viet Minh were every bit as ruthless as the French.”

A preposterous observation.

In the case of the United States, you have the most powerful and richest nation in the world coming from 10,000 miles away and bombarding this small country from offshore Navy vessels, from seven airbases in Thailand, from Guam -- never mind the airbases in South Vietnam itself -- with more bombs than had been dropped in all of World War II, times three. And suddenly, the communist side is every bit as ruthless as the American side. It’s totally apples and oranges.

And even if there were equivalence, in the cause of what? You had one side fighting for an indisputably honorable cause: independence, sovereignty, pride, self-determination. On the other, you had people fighting for the most astounding reasons. “I wanted to star in my own war movie.” “My girlfriend wouldn’t love me.” “The neighbors back home would think I was a traitor.” “I had to prove I was a man.” Nowhere in the film is this almost ridiculous disparity remarked upon.

That’s very well observed. I wish I had written just that paragraph.

 

I didn't particularly care for the interviewer, but I always find it interesting to hear Christian Appy talk about Vietnam.  So thanks for posting, @wonderwoman.

[shapeshifter]

35 minutes ago, Bastet said:

didn't particularly care for the interviewer, but I always find it interesting to hear Christian Appy talk about Vietnam.  So thanks for posting, @wonderwoman.

And thanks for taking the time to pick out some key quotes and for your remarks, @Bastet. 
Appy is quoted as saying: 

Quote

they never use, for instance, the words “lie” or “defeat” —

Is that accurate? Do those words literally not occur in the entire series?

[GHScorpiosRule]

They never use, for instance, the words "lie" or "defeat"--

6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Is that accurate? Do those words literally not occur in the entire series?

I didn't read the Salon article--I stopped reading their articles over a year ago when they had a really racist headline. I was done.

As for whether the show using the words lie and defeat? Granted, I marathoned through this, but fuck yes, the vets said their government lied to them. I can't recall if the exact word "defeat" was used, but I do remember them saying they "lost" which is synonymous with defeat.

And as for the series not doing a comparison of the war in Afghanistan or the Iraq War, maybe I'm being naive, or have tunnel vision or whatever the word is, but this series was about Vietnam. Not about all the wars we've fought. Sure, I won't deny that there are eerie similarities between Vietnam and those two wars, including lying politicians, etc. But I'm not going to hold that they didn't cover it against Burns or Novick. And if I'm in the minority with this opinion, it's okay. I know we, here, posting and commenting on this series have said we haven't learned a fucking thing from Vietnam, and isn't that a good thing? Not that we haven't learned, but that we, the viewers are talking about it? 

Sure, the series had maybe two or three people who were part of the antiwar movement. There was one who admitted she was part of the antiwar movement that saw the soldiers as war criminals and murderers and that she realized she was wrong to think that way, and apologized. I got teary when I heard her say that.

And again, maybe I'm naive, but going by what these Vets and other documentaries I've seen, I don't recall any of the soldiers who returned home, broken, shattered, lost, as being welcomed home. Except for the POWs who were officers. You would think if any of them had been welcomed back home, that Burns, of all people would have shown that. I have a lot more respect for him, than anyone who writes for Salon. Sorry, that's just how I feel.

[lovinbob]

On 10/16/2017 at 9:07 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

And as for the series not doing a comparison of the war in Afghanistan or the Iraq War, maybe I'm being naive, or have tunnel vision or whatever the word is, but this series was about Vietnam. Not about all the wars we've fought. Sure, I won't deny that there are eerie similarities between Vietnam and those two wars, including lying politicians, etc. But I'm not going to hold that they didn't cover it against Burns or Novick. And if I'm in the minority with this opinion, it's okay. I know we, here, posting and commenting on this series have said we haven't learned a fucking thing from Vietnam, and isn't that a good thing? Not that we haven't learned, but that we, the viewers are talking about it? 

I always get very impatient with critiques/reviews like that. If the Salon writer wants to call out the parallels between Vietnam and other wars, they should make their own documentary. As a viewer, I didn't need Burns and Novick to explicitly tell me about the parallels. The parallels are abundantly clear, thanks to Burns and Novick's thorough coverage and the insightful, articulate interviews. I am thinking about them myself. As you mentioned, we are all talking about them in these forums. This film speaks for itself, and IMO it makes an incredibly strong indictment of Vietnam, the actors involved, and how the war was prosecuted.

On 9/25/2017 at 10:12 AM, monakane said:

I feel that Johnson was full of regret.  If not for Viet Nam, I think he would have been considered one of our greatest presidents.  I think he was a brilliant domestic strategist, but had no feel for foreign relations.  I read a book recently titled "The President's Club" and it's about the presidents' relationships with each other.  One of the things I learned is that Nixon scuttled the Johnson's 1968 peace talks.  Here's an article on it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?mcubz=3

The President's Club was such a great book and really made me feel for Johnson. I've always been fascinated by him. 

[Cheezwiz]

8 hours ago, lovinbob said:

The President's Club was such a great book and really made me feel for Johnson. I've always been fascinated by him. 

I've always been fascinated by Johnson as well - such a complex character full of contradictions: a master political manipulator, a crass bully who browbeat people around him, yet was also capable of displaying eloquence and sensitivity. Unfortunately when it came to foreign policy, he surrounded himself with yes-men. I think his heart was in the right place with regards to domestic policy, and his regret and guilt over Vietnam was genuine. Vietnam ultimately killed him.

[lovinbob]

I just finally finished the whole thing. I am eager to watch it again; I feel like I wasn't able to absorb and understand it all.

I can't believe how ignorant I was and still am about all of it, especially how complex the factions were, and how desperate life was for the Vietnamese during and after the war. Several years ago, I found out that my best childhood friend was smuggled out of Vietnam--her mom is Vietnamese and her dad is American. I never asked her the whole story--I'm not sure why. But seeing what those people went through even years after—I am just filled with sadness and anger at myself for not learning more.

[izabella]

I'm late to the party, but finally watched this documentary and was blown away.  We have a lot of Vietnam refugees in my city, so I was very interested in this series.  I was only a kid when the war ended, and it never made it into my schoolbooks, so I was woefully uninformed.  This series...holy shit.  Maybe it's our current times adding to it, but I was in a rage during most of my watching, when I wasn't in tears.

All I can say at this point, is America is terrible at learning from history, even our own very recent history.  We seem to have learned NOTHING.