I read that. I would advise getting some maps while reading it. It gets fairly technical if you aren't familiar with the ground the fighting is happening on.
The Vietnam War by Ken Burns on PBS
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Final evacuation segment is heart-wrenching. Plenty of realistic decisions came to a head, so it's easy to over-simplify. Can't recall the $$ amount Ford requested from Congress to continue a proper evacuation, but Congress said 'No Mas' ... a plug-pulling that had been resisted for years on diplomatic/alliance principle.
I thought it was so interesting how they pointed out the complete misread of the situation. It should have been seen as the end of the colonial era but we took it as "Communists, Communists everywhere" instead.
I loved the quote from the NVA vet. In reference to winning, he said, and this of course may not be the exact quote as I am going by memory, "only people who have not been in a war say there is winners of a war. In war, everyone loses. It is just a lot of destruction".
Alyssa Rosenberg's in depth writeup about the production of this series. Really good insight into the making. Kind of long but so is this series! Worth a read IMHO if you are going to watch the whole series.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/op...l-width:homepage/story&utm_term=.3b5b2227918e
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/op...l-width:homepage/story&utm_term=.3b5b2227918e
I like the reverse-video montage during the intro (more accurately "the outro")
Whar all my documentary peeps?
#2 tonight was interesting. Getting to the place in time where they are talking about things I remember. 12 year old Boxster was watching the news and reading Life and seeing the monks setting themselves on fire. Not something you forgot, nor the pictures of the assassinated Diem and his brother.
Interesting that they juxtaposed this with the civil rights movement that was also gaining steam at the time. Another thing that stands out in my memory from my tweener and young teen times.
#2 tonight was interesting. Getting to the place in time where they are talking about things I remember. 12 year old Boxster was watching the news and reading Life and seeing the monks setting themselves on fire. Not something you forgot, nor the pictures of the assassinated Diem and his brother.
Interesting that they juxtaposed this with the civil rights movement that was also gaining steam at the time. Another thing that stands out in my memory from my tweener and young teen times.
You can binge watch the entire thing (all episodes) on the PBS app if you don't want to wait for it to air.
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I haven't been able to watch part 2 yet, have to catch up either tonight or Tuesday. ... .Looking forward to it.
Part 2 analysis: Gawd, I don't even know where to start.
Just when you think the situation couldn't get more cluster-***** ... it does.
Just when you think the situation couldn't get more cluster-***** ... it does.
The juxtaposition of Vietnam, civil rights, hippies, domestic violence, the amazing changes in pop culture, space race, etc.
The 1960's....one hell of an interesting era.
The monks-on-fire images are legendary (for lack of a more appropriate word), but I already learned more in part 2 about the Catholic/Buddhist divide than I knew previously. For some reason I thought those events took place later in the decade. My knowledge of Diem ouster/coup was even less than that.
I was only about 10 at the time of Siagon evacuation, so the only real memory I have of the war in real-time is "The Vietnam War is taking place." History-wise, I'm familiar with events from about '68 onward, but I'm getting heavy education about pre-'65.
By the end of part 2, I can see the goalposts moving from a goal of unifying a country (or "liberating") to a focus on fighting communism in general (at least from U.S. perspective).
It's revisionist, though, to say it was a wrong-headed, short-sighted set of decisions at the time. Cold War anxiety was palpable.
It's revisionist, though, to say it was a wrong-headed, short-sighted set of decisions at the time. Cold War anxiety was palpable.
Kinda why I am really liking this so far. Lots of this I read/watched at the time but was of course missing the precursors and background stuff. I think summer of 1963 was sort of an awakening time for me. I was 11 and starting to pay more attention to serious stuff. It was hard to avoid. Parents took Life and Look weekly magazines and I used to look forward to there arrival. The national news was offset with one of the channels coming on at 5 and another at 530 so you could watch an hour of national news (the evening news was a BIG deal). Fire hosing protesters, protesters getting beaten by cops, crazy damn racist southern governors, monks burning, introduced to the term "coup d'état", damn. And that 1963 ended with the total gut punch of the Kennedy assassination not that long after I turned 12.
By the end of the decade I was spinning a 45 of Creedence Clearwater Revival's song Fortunate Son. Boxster mom didn't probably didn't "get" the song. I do miss some of the message music. Even when it was not a message song we sometimes thought it was, like Emerson Lake & Palmer's Lucky Man...we thought it was about Kennedy. Seems now it is limited to figuring out who Taylor is dissing in her latest song.
/end daily Boxster flashback
It will shift again to "don't be the guy that lost Vietnam" which is really behind everything from start to finish. Like where we are in Afghanistan right now. to get out of Afghanistan it will likely take a president who is so overwhelming popular that it won't matter to a reelection or a president that is content with one term cause every single unrelated act of terror will be blamed on him. Ford, the accidental president, fit the later as he was really reluctant to run in 1976.
This show is highlighting what I knew long ago: Lyndon Baines Johnson (and he is a symbol of the people around him) was an awful, awful person. I just erased about 4 sentences.
Another riveting episode tonight. This series is exceeding my expectations.
