Ken Burns - Viet Nam

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Did you ask me a question?

You accused a person of prejudice. When asked what the prejudice is, you decline to answer that
 
dvdjs said:
You accused a person of prejudice. When asked what the prejudice is, you decline to answer that
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No I did not. This is what I wrote:
Duesenberg said:
I don’t know if Ken Burns is a racist or is he was pandering to his typical PBS audience, or if his PBS editors/backers requested/required the final outcome or a bit of all three, but it was way way over the top.

And it was offensive.
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I answered your question.
 
Enough.

Post 17:
Duesenberg: … There is nothing wrong with discussing the racial prejudice that once existed in Major League Baseball. Burns even devoted an entire episode to the old Negro League which was fine. But to continually harp about racial prejudice throughout every episode was very wrong. It was nothing more than a display of racial prejudice itself – Burns’ own prejudice in other words.
[Emphasis added]
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You accused him of prejudice. Do not claim that you did not.
Enough.
 
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dvdjs said:
Enough.

Post 17:
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It was nothing more than a display of racial prejudice itself – Burns’ own prejudice in other words OR it may be that he was forced to what he did to make it more salable to PBS.

It wasn’t OK as you imply. A number of professional reviewers noting Burns overdoing it with the racial comments. Do a bit of research.
 
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On PBS’s Charlie Rose, Burns and Novick said the Vietnam War was mostly fought by 18 and 19 year old high school dropouts.

In Burns and Novick’s “The Vietnam War”, we get the opinions of a Rhodes Scholar & Yale Rugby Player; three Vietnam War veterans who are novelists about the war; an officer who is the son of a West Point Faculty member; a Judge’s son; a University of Chicago Anti-War protestor; and maybe like 2-3 people who were from a working class background ( and one of those was a man who sent audio cassette tapes to his family and was killed during the Vietnam War).

No one from the Silent Majority or YAF or domestic supported the war domestically was interviewed for the documentary.

Burns and Novick always seem to be interested in the most intelligent, well educated opinions about whatever subject matter they’re dealing with; that might deliver expert opinions on a historical topic but that does not make the documentary they produce comprehensive or definitive history.
 
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They certainly didn’t get the intelligent, well-informed opinions/observations concerning Kent State…starting where they did missed most of the story…
 
How much coverage did Ken Burns devote to the invasions of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese and the assassinations of school teachers by the Viet Cong?
 
I think he covered the NVA invasions of South Vietnam well.

I don’t think he covered Viet Cong terrorism of South Vietnamese civilians that much except for the Tet episode.

In that episode, he mentioned there were either NVA or VC Execution Squads that killed Saigon government officials and their families on the streets of Saigon during Tet; the Hue Massacre of South Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive was also talked about.

But there wasn’t a whole lot of time was spent on the topic despite the documentary being 18 hours long; nor was much time spent on the CIA’s Phoenix Program.
 
The Viet Cong terrorized the people in the countryside for YEARS.

They were supplied via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara denied even existed.

So, he sent in the SOG … Special Operations Group … and he wanted them to make home movies of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Read “SOG” by John Plaster. Excellent book; it will leave you disgusted at the perfidy by our senior commanders.

But McNamara wanted the SOG guys to share with the local South Vietnamese IN ADVANCE and they had been compromised, so their top secret ops were compromised … blown from the very beginning.

American casualties were horrendous … since they were blown from the beginning, the NVA had units in place to hunt down the Americans.

What a mess!

When local commanders presented intelligence that they had collected, he denied it. And he turned down requests for attacks on targets. He set up so many bureaucratic roadblocks that local commanders could not even attack identified targets. And timeliness was essential; these were moving targets; they only stayed in one place for brief times. Targets were selected at weekly luncheons at the White House. Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and President Lyndon Johnson and they notified the Russians a week in advance so that no Russians were endangered. Johnson is extensively quoted as how he controlled every action by the American troops. He stated that he did not want any Americans shooting down any MiG fighters. Visit Amazon and read books on the subject. Look up author Peter E. Davies and his three books on the F-105 fighter in which he quotes President Johnson.

Look up other authors as well. I recommend the following:

Ed Rasimus … “When Thunder Rolled” and “Palace Cobra”.

Excellent author and book: “The Hunter Killers: The Extraordinary Story of the First Wild Weasels, the Band of Maverick Aviators Who Flew the Most Dangerous Missions of the Vietnam War”
by Dan Hampton . Dan Hampton was a Wild Weasel himself. You go and tempt the surface-to- air missile operators to shoot you; and when they do, you have ten seconds to do something.
 
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“Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail” by Rick Newman

“Misty: First Person Stories of the F-100 Fast FACs in the Vietnam War” by USAF (Ret ). Major General Don Shepperd

If you can’t afford these books, then get them from the library.

These are not opinion books, they recount the actual flights over the Ho Chi Minh trail.

At the very least read the comments by readers who are often participants but are not writers.
 
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“Thud Ridge: F-105 Thunderchief Missions Over Vietnam” by Jack Broughton

This is possibly the original book on the air war over Vietnam.

Broughton blew the whistle on how the Russians [they were the “Soviets” back then] were able to resupply North Vietnam with missiles … and not be challenged.

"Takhli Tales: and other stories " by Billy R. Sparks

Billy Sparks has been criticized for not doing the right kind of editing. But by then he was in a wheelchair and died … from the stress of being sent out there and stabbed in the back by the higher-ups in Washington.
 
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Billy Sparks and Ed Rasimus survived the war, but died relatively young … from the accumulated stress.

Visit Google and type in " You Tube Ed Rasimus " …

There is his funeral and “farewell luncheon”.

And a video made by a fellow who survived the war.


The video “There Is A Way” … [a response to “there is no way”.]

 
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F-4 Phantom II

Memories of Men Who Flew the F-4 in Combat in the Vietnam War
www.f-4phantom.com

By the time this was written, we had some kind of weapons to attack or to defeat surface to air missiles.

But the rules of engagement were ridiculous and absurd.
 
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I was stationed in Germany 63-66, so my tour was up when the cadre period stopped. We should have attacked the North. This way they would have had them occupied in building/rebuilding their own country and putting an enormous expense on their own people as well has causing a hardship and something to think about when Ho Chi asked them to cooperate. This is a necessity in winning a war. Germany was kept overwhelmed in rebuilding their infrastructure and we couldn’t have won if they were allowed to remain intact through the war. The lesson learned is that if a nation fears another nation may become involved, then don’t go in there. Ho Chi had the right spirit, but the wrong type of government, democracy not communism. They should be paying war rep before the UN allowed them in.
 
How Indochina became a French Protectorate (this period was pretty much passed over in the Burns and Novick Vietnam War series:

"France’s Nightmare in Indochina":

“Tu Duc succeeded Thieu Tri in 1847 as emperor of Annam and Cochinchina. Tu Duc had a bitter hatred for the French missionaries and their Vietnamese converts and embarked on a fierce campaign to eliminate Christianity from Vietnam. Vietnamese Catholics were to be branded with the word “ta doo” (infidel) on their left cheek, and all of their property was to be confiscated by the state. French priests were to be drowned and Vietnamese priests were to be sawed in half lengthwise. In 1851 and 1852, two prominent priests were put to death, and missionaries all over Asia called for action by the French government.”

http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/frances-nightmare-in-indochina/

Persecution of Christians in today’s Socialist Republic of Vietnam, entirely skipped over by the Burns and Novick The Vietnam War series and today’s MSM:

"Catholic Vietnam: Growing despite Communist oppression":

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/12/05/catholic-vietnam-growing-despite-communist-oppression/

"Vietnamese Catholics Persecuted by Communist Pro-Government Thugs":

https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/vietnamese-catholics-persecuted-by-pro-government-thugs

Human Rights Watch: "Vietnam: End ‘Evil Way’ Persecution of Montagnard Christians: US, International Donors Should Insist on Respect for Freedom of Religion"

https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/26/vietnam-end-evil-way-persecution-montagnard-christians

"Christian NGOs Report on Severe Persecution Against Hmong Christians in Vietnam":

http://www.christianpost.com/news/c...on-against-hmong-christians-in-vietnam-20026/
 
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They repeated episodes 1 and 2 last night or early this morning. Episode 1 began after midnight. I tried my hardest to watch it, but I fell asleep after 20 minutes.
Does anyone know how many episodes there are?
I am not sure I could watch many episodes in a row. I find the voice of the man who narrates his documentaries very annoying.
It makes me sleepy.
I was in high school and college during the Vietnam War. My cousin fought in the war and he returned very screwed up. Fortunately, he got his life straightened out after many years.
 
I guess there is a thin line between wanting your world candy coated, and not wanting to join hands and sing Kumbyah!
 
There are 10 " The Vietnam War" Episodes; each episode is from 90 to 120 minutes long (for a total of 18 hours!).

Idk if this helps any but I too, at first, was annoyed by the droning narrator’s voice, until someone on Twitter remarked the narrator sounded like Henry Fonda which then, for whatever reason, made the narrator’s voice more interesting to listen to.

I’ve sat down and watched 5/10 episodes and listened to the other episodes while cooking dinner or doing laundry.

I think the best episodes were “Resolve”, “This is What We Do”, “Things Fall Apart”, and “A Disrespectful Loyalty”.

You can watch at your leisure online at KCTS PBS station until October 15th and then it expires:

https://kcts9.org/programs/vietnam-...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
 
The Vietnam War was conducted in such a screwed up way, that I can’t bring myself to watch the series.
 
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