Ho Chi Minh is very much recognized across Asia for precisely the strengths outlined in this essay: his brilliant intelligence, chess-play like negotiations and fierce dedication to the Vietnamese people. That was quite a lesson for me to learn coming from the American education system.
Ho Chi Minh admired the US and actually modeled his nationalist revolution on the US revolution, even using the preamble to the US Declaration of Independence in his own Declaration of Independence.
The US initially supported his independence movement, during and just after the war, but then sided with the French suppression of it and started it’s long involvement in the conflict.
+1 for the recommendation. The first episode should be required viewing for anyone wanting to understand the post WW2 geopolitical world order and how the US became involved in such a mess. The rest of the series (especially once Nixon comes onto the scene) is like watching a slow descent into madness (the public polls and reaction after Kent State and Mai Lie astounded me).
That was shocking for me too. In high school, we were taught that kent state was a significant event that galvanized the public to end the vietnam war. It made it seemed like 99% of americans were appalled by it. I had no idea that nearly 60% approved of the shooting.
> and Mai Lie astounded me
Yeah, it just shows that all the political talk about how good/kind/generous/decent americans are is just nonsense. I wish our politicians would stop it with the american exceptional lies already. We are people like any other. There are good and bad. We aren't saints. Also, how low were these people that they defended the murder of infants?
It also shocked me to learn that the Army threatened to open fire again after the initial shooting (the emotion in the Geology professor's voice as he pleads with the students to disperse or be killed is incredible). My school teacher taught that it was a horrible accident and provided no context of the disdain that many had for the anti-war/civil rights movement.
Much of the narrative and imagery of this episode could be ripped out the headlines today - "half" of the country approving of unarmed protesters being shot, hate mail directed at the parents of dead, images of cars driving into protesters blocking roads, and an attempt to portray all protestors as violent.
I don’t know I’ve read a lot of legitimate criticism of the show, basically that it’s continuing the same old whitewashing of the war.
Having read for example, how Noam Chomsky describes the Vietnam war, I have a very different perspective on it that what is promulgated in the mass media.
According to the show “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings”. It also inaccurately says the Gulf of Tonkin attacks occurred when there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary (Pentagon papers!)
I haven’t watched the show but I bet it doesn’t characterize the war as the invasion of South Vietnam by the US, which it plainly was, a old style colonial war to prevent a nationalist revolution and to teach the region a lesson in what happens to those who pursue and independent course.
You really should watch before judging. On the Gulf of Tonkin, this is how Burns describes the first incident involving the Maddox:
"The commander of a North Vietnamese torpedo-boat squadron moved to attack the Maddox. The Americans opened fire and missed. North Vietnamese torpedoes also missed. But carrier-based U.S. planes damaged two of the North Vietnamese boats and left a third dead in the water."
That pretty clearly states that the Maddox fired first - it doesn't even describe it as a 'warning shot', but rather a 'miss'. He also says that "Johnson knew the attack had been provoked by the South Vietnamese raids on North Vietnam's islands".
Then on the second attack, he says
"No second attack ever happened, but at the time, anxious American sonar operators aboard the Maddox and Turner Joy
convinced themselves one had. The attack was probable but not certain, Johnson was told, and since it had probably occurred, the president decided it should not go unanswered."
This is interspersed with tape of Johnson and McNamara discussing how to react to a second attack, and discussion about how the North Vietnamese command had never authorized any attack on the Maddox.
What story of the Gulf of Tonkin were you hoping he would tell?
It first mentions that Johnson wanted to escalate so had a congressional resolution drafted for when the time was right, then goes into how the whole incident was started by South Vietnamese boats attacking North Vietnamese islands (at the direction of the US), and then mentions that the events that followed were "one of the most controversial and consequential events in US history".
Considering this the third episode of the series and that fact that the first ~20 minutes are spent explaining how Johnson was looking for a reason to escalate in the context of the election, I really don't understand how anyone can portray this as Burns trying to whitewash the incident!
Well I read that it had gotten the Gulf of Tonkin incident wrong in an article here. I stand corrected that sounds like a pretty good description of the incident.
I would like to watch it, I’ll get hold of it sometime.
The author of that article can't possible have seen the episode in question, or has possibly seen only fragments of it — or he misinterpreted it — because his criticisms are completely false.
I don't think you should watch Burns' documentaries or any documentaries as history, but as works of art.
And Burns' Vietnam War is a great work of art. And you have to appreciate that he is making a film for an audience and naturally, he will cater a significant part of it to that audience.
There is no such thing as a completely unbiased documentary or history book or political text. They are all made by biased people.
But I think Burns' gave every major side and every major viewpoint a voice in his documentary. And that's all we can ask.
I think his film was as objective and fair as anyone, or any american, can be. But you have to be cognizant of the fact that it is an american documentary by american filmmakers for an american audience.
A major theme of the series is how the American public was lied to about the reasons for the conflict and what happened during the war, with an emphasis on how successive Presidental administrations knew that the war was essentially unwinnable.
It also clearly highlights multiple times how the Americans were seen as invaders by much of the Vietnamese population.
There are legitimate reasons to criticize it but I wouldn't describe it as a whitewashing (I'm only 80% through it so maybe the tone changes later in the series).
I agree. The Americans look bad. The French look bad. Even worse is that at first the Americans looked like an ally since they were once a colony. They way they left the Vietnamese out to dry after WW2 is a tragedy.
I wish people wouldn't downvote so readily these days... but at least you got some good responses.
I just want to say it's ok to take a stance against the whitewashing of history especially regarding wars. I'm a combat vet and have spent a long time trying to decipher some of the darkness under the whitewashing in order to potentially find insights into timeless truths about war and politics, and most people truly just don't understand the extent to which it happens or just how much of what they think they "know" about something is half-truth surrounded by propaganda pushed by an education system with an agenda. It often hard to swallow ugly truths, and it's even harder to determine if they are "truth" or not in the first place, often since the evidence is lacking or hidden itself which forces us to use inductive logic instead of deductive logic. Many people don't understand the distinction.
What I like to do, especially on such controversial subjects as wars like Vietnam, is listen to a variety of positions and try to entertain their positions with as much openess as possible. Sometimes I find diamonds this way. For example, one of the most influential persons on my current views of Vietnam is Fletcher Prouty[1]. A more recent thread I have begun to unravel is the claims by Webster Tarpley[2] about Robert Thompsons[3] influence over the early strategic decisions. The point is that these matters are still being researched, foia'd, and analyzed, so don't be too discouraged at the pushback you get for going counter to the common narrative.
Burns has said he makes films, not documentaries. PBS shouldn't have relied on him to do a Vietnam "film", but I guess he still brings in the ratings.
A good documentary on the Vietnam war would have every Republican and Democrat denouncing it and calling the director a traitor. That would never happen with a Burns film. Bill Moyers would have been a better choice.
Sidenote: "Kill Chain" (book) by Andrew Cockburn also has some Vietnam War era stories...that also relate to the current "war on terror".
I also think there is something to be said about media that is accessible to all and not just those of a certain political persuasion - the people that need to see/hear how futile the war ultimately was aren't going to watch something that calls them all traitors. The military, political, and social realities of Vietnam have such clear application to our current society, so I personally hope many people see the show.
edit: Disregard this comment due to @xefer comment below.
I meant: the director of a good war documentary would be called a traitor if he/she went deeper into topics like: LBJ's lies about Gulf of Tonkin, lies exposed by the Ellsberg Pentagon Papers, kept mentioning the killing of millions of Veitnanese , Cambodia, Lao, Nixon's prevention of a LBJ peace deal to help his own election, his talk of using nuclear bombs, etc.
I never said anything about calling the audience traitors. I think you mis-understood what I was saying. From your POV, it seems hard that Burns could leave out important stuff in 18 hours.
I've also enjoyed reading Chris Appy's post-show notes after viewing.
Christian G. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (2015), Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (2003), and Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (1993).
If you like this sort of thing, check out The Death of Yugoslavia [1]. It's an absolutely riveting BBC documentary series, in six parts, about the break-up of Yugoslavia, and about the subsequent wars and conflicts.
I love how how methodical, matter-of-fact and neutral this documentary is (or at least it seems to me); the filmmakers don't take sides, and they work only to explain a series of historical events, portraying all sides equally in the process. The British English narration doesn't hurt, either.
I rather prefer this format over Ken Burns', who turns up the emotional levels with personal "stories", folk music and photographs that look epic and timeless. Unfortunately, among documentarians, Burns' format is much more popular, probably because it's easier to do.
Easier as in lower-hanging fruit, from a stylistic point of view. It's harder to make things interesting if you can't resort to the tricks of the Hollywood trade such as emotionally manipulative music, sound effects, dramatic zooms and rapid editing.
I recognize and appreciate Ken Burns' craft and find his documentaries interesting and intelligent and clearly well-researched, but I also find his work to be extremely bland. Maybe it's because his style has been endlessly copied (I don't know if this is actually the case), but a Ken Burns documentary comes across, to me, like every American History Channel or Smithsonian Channel documentary blended together; it moves at a predictable, slow pace, always with a magisterial-sounding faceless narrator (usually Peter Coyote), featuring music tailored to each scene (from folksy to solemn or patriotic; if there's a saloon on screen there'll definitely be ragtime or bluegrass playing), and always with the air of solemn respectability.
I'm a much bigger fan of directors like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Michael Madsen (Into Eternity), who enliven the format with fewer clichés.
I've just watched some parts of Ken Burns' doc, and I'm a little disappointed. It tries to be so impartial/objective but at the same time I feel it portrays the US gov't as rationally acting from necessity, where the protesters are shown as destructive and the north viets as mysterious/wild/weak-but-many (the doc barely shows their side of the story).
It occurs to my that I think the opposites are true. US gov't was acting irrational/anti-freedom/for-no-good-cause/destructive. The protesters were right and managed to pressure the gov'ts quite a bit with their "slight-destruction". Finally the north viets very very human, and they sacrificed a lot themselves for their just cause. They were right to fight for self determination; it is what the US also had to do at some point (and takes great pride from).
Especially in the current geo-political climate we need to see the human toll of these totally useless wars. No body attacked the US for a while, yet it has attacked/destabilized many countries. It, again, spends more then half of its budget on war with no end. And now has a wildcard president picking fights with a, this time, nuclear power. Wtf.
Finally, it gets mentioned in the doc, but very lightly (end of part 3):
The admitted "false flag" or "fake" attack that served as a pretext for the US to get into war. This is a HUGE part of the story. There was no good reason for entering, "we the people" never wanted to join, so a reason was fabricated. Disgusting. Completely in line with the low moves Hitler made to get his war going.
> US gov't was acting irrational/anti-freedom/for-no-good-cause/destructive.
How old are you? Valid question. My younger friends who missed being alive during the real fear of Russia/Communism often say exactly what you said. People who are old enough to remember that time period, even if it was the very end, understand a little better the mood of the world at that time.
History does not happen in a vacuum. While it may have been irrational in hindsight, at the time the spread of Russian communism was a real and valid fear (the documentary even talks of France telling the US if it did not help in Vietnam they would consider aligning with Russia). If only the US knew then that it would basically win a culture victory barely ~20 years later.
Your TLDR is seems to say ignore history and believe the very simplistic view of a war mongering US. If wars were only that simple, they could probably be avoided.
> My younger friends who missed being alive during the real fear of Russia/Communism often say exactly what you said.
That fear was mongered. Socialist ideology is there to help the workers: only capitalists have to fear it. It's not worked out well, even for many workers -- I blame that on a bad (highly authoritarian) route to implement socialist ideals, not on those ideal by themselves. Capitalists made the US workers afraid of commies, because they saw it as a thread. You've been fooled.
> at the time the spread of Russian communism was a real and valid fear
Seriously? I call it an unfounded and irrational fear, mongered by super wealthy (that were really afraid to have "their" assets seized by the workers). Valid? Not for the working class.
> Your TLDR is seems to say ignore history and believe the very simplistic view of a war mongering US. If wars were only that simple, they could probably be avoided.
No! I advocate not to watch this doc because it is a waste of your time. Nothing new is there. And it does say "US was evil, lets learn from it and do not do it again" -- which I believe in the current geo-political mess it the right think to do. (Yes I'm talking to you: ALL RECENT US PRESIDENTS)
How can you justify the US has not been war mogenring recently. I see huge military (they call it defense, lol) budgets. I see no WMDs in Iraq, no danger for the US in Libya, no danger for the US Afgan/Iran/Syria. These are not peace missions. People die and US seems to make it worse. Gadaffi->Isis; Saddam->Isis; Assad->Isis. And now aggression to NK. Have some restraint, c'mon!
> If only the US knew then that it would basically win a culture victory barely ~20 years later.
Please explain this, and how it matters to the discussion.
It's more based around interviews. But I think it shows a really interesting perspective, the perspective of the self-liberated colony that had to fight off the US army in order to get their own declaration of independence recognized.
> in order to get their own declaration of independence recognized.
In that context, it is worth knowing that this is how the Vietnamese declaration of independence[1] starts:
> All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
> This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
While Ho was a radical from relatively early on, he also admired the US greatly for a long time. Much like Castro (though the concrete missed opportunities for the US is much clearer in the case of Castro).
> While Ho was a radical from relatively early on, he also admired the US greatly for a long time.
Marx admired the speed of innovation and efficiency of capitalism. :) But he also saw the downsides of the capitalist system for the workers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIcc
Sure. The first chapter of the Communist Manifesto starts out basically praising capitalism into the skies for doing away with the worse systems before it and making efficiency gains that might finally make redistribution possible.
I just wanted to emphasise that even though by Ho's time it was starting to become common for the left to paint the US as an enemy, and while Ho was at one point even an operative for the Komintern, he did not fit in that category - he long hoped for US support for Vietnamese independence because of his admiration for the apparent US views on colonialism for example.
It's covered in the PBS documentary, Ho Chi Minh asked Woodrow Wilson for help during the armistice talks for WWI Wilson had proclaimed support for self determination over colonialism, the PBS doc claims Wilson never got Ho Chi Minh's letter, history showed Wilson to be a pretty big racist so he might not have done anything anyways and Wilson was incapacitated for the last years of his presidency as well. Wilson also sent US troops into the USSR to try to stop the Bolshevik revolution so showed his preference towards preserving the old order.
On the other hand it's kind of a crazy what if to imagine there not being a French/US involved civil war in Vietnam.
Yes, the same winning side. Ho Chi Minh did not want to be as cut throat as the guy ( forget his name ) who outmaneuvered Minh to take control of running the war versus the US. (According to the episodes of the PBS doc I have seen so far).
There is nothing wrong with a political argument. (It would be a very narrow minded view on business building and IT, if you'd think of them as apolitical.)
This isn't naively denying the political for the supposedly non-political—of course there are politics in everything. It's about the limitations of the internet forum as a medium. We can't have both flamewars and stay interesting, and the mandate of the site is to try to stay interesting. Flames are lame.
Re "business building and IT", I suppose I should add that HN is absolutely not just about business and technology—never has been and never will be, as long as I have a say.
> for what I can only think are ideological reasons
That perception tends to be in the eye of the beholder, in the sense that people of all ideological commitments see HN as being censored in favor of the opposite side, in proportion to the strength of their own feeling. I've written about this a bunch:
