Vietnamese Portrayed by Burns/Novick

Some thoughts on how Vietnamese people are represented in the Burns/Novick documentary

             This is a documentary focused on the American Experience, so it has only small slots of time allotted to the Vietnamese.  We have to be grateful that those Vietnamese selected to speak in the film are so articulate and passionate. More on this below. But when it comes to the main issue -- was our combat role in Vietnam a well-intentioned mistake? -- the audience is forced to draw its own conclusions. We never hear a clear statement from a representative of the Vietnamese government as to why they believed they had to fight.  From the interviews with former marines and US government advisers, we learn that they knew little about the people they had come to protect. Over time they realized that many Vietnamese resented their presence, but we do not hear anyone state the obvious: we were invading a sovereign country that had never attacked the United States. The country we claimed to be defending, the Government of Vietnam with its capital in Saigon, was our offspring, as JFK is quoted as saying in an early episode.

             Watching episode two, and the long segment on the battle of Ap Bac in 1963, I found it odd that the narrator extolled the power of the APCs that the US had furnished to the ARVN, without mentioning that these behemoths were destroying the peasants' rice crops. Planting rice is arduous work in the flooded paddies; it is usually women who spend hours in the muddy water to plant each seedling by hand. The mud dikes between the fields are built up over the years to keep the water in -- did our soldiers and military advisers not realize how unpopular it would make our army when they tore up the rice fields to search for "the enemy"?

             These ten episodes on the Vietnam War do include some excellent interviews with a group of Vietnamese, as I said above.  Overall their views on the war add greatly to the picture being presented.  Some viewers complain that there is no representation of the South Vietnamese government, but the same is true for the official DRV point of view.  We hear the honest views of people who are non-official spokespeople.  However, it would have helped the viewers to put their remarks into context if they had been better identified and introduced from the outset.

             In the case of Nguyen Ngoc, an important literary figure in the history of post-war Vietnam, this is especially true. He was the head of the Writers' Union during the few years of Vietnamese "glasnost", when important new authors including Bao Ninh were first published.  He was removed from this post in 1989, as the communist bloc began to crumble and the Vietnamese leadership decided that political reform had gone too far. Bao Ninh himself, the author of The Sorrow of War, should also have had more of an intro, as it is important to know that he is still one of the rare popular writers who has been willing the criticize the DRV's sacrifice of young men and women to the war machine. Finally, Huy Duc, the younger commentator who appears throughout the documentary, also deserves a special introduction. He first became known as a dissenting blogger, "Osin". He has held two scholarships to study journalism in the US and during his last one at Harvard, he published in Vietnamese a two-volume history of post-war Vietnam, The Winning Side.  

             As it transpires from this work, he is critical of post-war policies, but a supporter of one of the more powerful figures in the wartime leadership, Truong Chinh. Truong Chinh's former personal secretary is a key source for his critique of Le Duan, the wartime first secretary of the Workers' Party. One of the things that Huy Duc contributes to the documentary is a strong endorsement of the idea that from 1960 Le Duan was the all-powerful chief of the DRV Politburo, who designed the aggressive strategy and tactics of the DRV, including the Tet Offensive.  This is a popular view that is also being promoted by young US scholars; it conveniently deflects responsibility for the war from the US.  Originally the vision of LD as the evil leader who countermanded Ho Chi Minh's policies was promoted by a pro-Chinese leader in Hanoi, Hoang Van Hoan. In 1979 he defected to China. One can see that Le Duan's original sin was to accept Soviet support for the Vietnamese campaign against the Khmer Rouge, and to refuse to join the Chinese sphere of influence.

             This singling out of one member of the Hanoi leadership as an oppressive promoter of war, leaves the impression that some in Hanoi doubted the legitimacy of their fight to unify their country. This is a clear misrepresentation -- the differences that existed among the Hanoi leadership concerned, among other things,  whether and when to negotiate with the Americans, but not the legitimacy of their struggle for unification. There is compelling evidence to show that Le Duan himself was always more favorable towards a negotiated peace than the more Maoist members of the leadership. This seems to have clearly been the case in 1966. Zhou Enlai in June of that year accused "pro-Kremlin revisionists" of infiltrating the DRV leadership, "producing a struggle between those who backed fighting until a military victory... and those who favored talks to end the war quickly." Zhou Enlai referred to Le Duan as someone who had "changed course". "Until now he had been a leftist," Zhou said (The Third Force in the Vietnam War, p. 119).  

--Sophie Quinn-Judge

Ho Dang Hoa

For helping show the Vietnam War in a new light

HO DANG HOA
TV PRODUCER,  61
VIETNAM

BY JAMES PALMER

The war came to Ho Dang Hoa when he was a child, as the first American bombs fell on his hometown of Hanoi in 1966. “I was a curious boy,” he recalls. “I used to run to see the fires and the people killed.” Nine years later, he was a student learning Russian and planning to study in the Soviet Union when the North Vietnamese Army drafted him as part of the call-up for its final push against South Vietnam. He served for 13 years, at first in the anti-air artillery, then the air force as an intelligence officer.

But it took two Americans, he says, to give him the chance to see the war in its full light. Ho’s relationship with the United States had been as long and twisted as his country’s. As a child, he thought of the Americans only as invaders; as an adult, the army taught him the enemy’s language in order to study its war plans; once released from the military, he became one of Vietnam’s Fulbright scholars in 1993, studying for an MBA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, before returning to Vietnam as a lecturer himself. In 2011, Ho began working with Lynn Novick and Ken Burns on the epic documentary series The Vietnam War, released on PBS this September, that traces the stories of Vietnamese fighters. “These people had disappeared when the war ended,” he says. “Tracking them down, I found stories I had never heard.”

Ho was introduced to Novick and Burns by Thomas Vallely, a U.S. Marine veteran who runs Harvard University’s Vietnam program and was an advisor on the series. The filmmakers wanted Ho to be another bridge to Vietnam, emphasizing their desire to tell the war from both sides, giving the series’s American audience a chance to see the conflict through the eyes of the Vietnamese.

Ho is modest about his own role, but his work was critical for the film. He shaped the Vietnamese side of the story, finding individuals who had played roles unknown to Americans and aspects of the war forgotten even in Vietnam. The scope of interviewees he collected ranged from North Vietnamese propaganda artists to veterans of the anti-French war in the 1950s, who had taken the skills they learned fighting one occupier and passed them down to a new generation of soldiers.

In Vietnam, the war gets plenty of attention — but largely as a matter of patriotic monuments and victory celebrations, not individual stories. “I was looking for the Vietnamese soldiers who had fought on Hill 875 [at the Battle of Dak To in 1967],” Ho says. His quest took him from one end to the other of Vietnam, in what was often a winding and complex investigation: “I found the name of the unit, and a veteran gave me the name of one of the survivors of the battle. So I went to a mountain village to talk to him, and it turned out he’d joined afterward, but he gave me the name of another man, in the south. I went down to see him, and he’d been wounded just before the battle and evacuated. But he gave me one more name — in Hanoi. That was the actual veteran of the battle, and he lived a mile away from my house.”

In contrast, America’s vision of the war has too often been an exercise in self-reflection; the needless deaths of young men in muddy rice fields half a world away or the students at Kent State. Vietnamese were mostly in the background, the body count mere numbers. The Vietnam War strives to correct this; the audience hears the cracking voices of soldiers who lost comrades, parents who lost children, and South Vietnamese who lost their country. In September, after the series aired, Vallely told a reporter that a friend had called it “the re-education camp for America.”

Like all of his generation, Ho’s whole life was shaped by the war, from his lost education to his memories of the dead. Being a part of this series was not an end to that story, but perhaps an unexpected addendum that brings a new kind of clarity. “Americans are good people — kind, friendly, interesting,” Ho says. “We should have been friends 50 years ago — there should never have been a war. And I hope the sons and daughters of Americans no longer have to go to die in foreign countries.”

James Palmer is Asia editor at Foreign Policy.

https://gt.foreignpolicy.com/2017/profile/ho-dang-hoa?92cb47faa7=

David Cortright: Military Resistance to the War

  

Antiwar resistance within the military during the Vietnam War

by David Cortright

One of the least known but most important chapters in the history of the Vietnam antiwar movement was the rebellion of troops within the military. In June 1971 the prestigious military publication Armed Forces Journal published an article entitled, “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” which stated: “The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. armed forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.”[1] A year later the eminent military sociologist Morris Janowitz seconded that analysis, declaring: “The military establishment, and especially its ground forces, are experiencing a profound crisis in legitimacy due to the impact of Vietnam, internal racial tension, corruption, extensive drug abuse, loss of command and operational effectiveness, and widespread antimilitary sentiment.”[2] In virtually every corner of the military, the burden of fighting an unpopular and unwinnable war led to dissent, social disruption and institutional decay.

Opposition to the war within the military can be classified into two broad categories—dissent and resistance. The dissenters were part of what became known as the GI movement, soldiers publishing ‘underground’ newspapers, signing antiwar petitions, attending protest rallies and engaging in various forms of public speech to demand an end to the war. The resisters were those who disobeyed orders, defied military authority, refused orders, went absent without leave, committed acts of sabotage, and in some cases attacked their own officers and sergeants.[3]

The GI Movement

Antiwar groups emerged within the enlisted ranks and among junior officers throughout the military during the years 1968-1972. They appeared first in the Army and Marine Corps and spread to the Navy and Air Force. GI antiwar newspapers were published by service members on nearly every major U.S. military base and on many ships. The total number of these antiwar periodicals was more than 400.[4] The GI press was an important expression of the ‘underground’ culture of protest and resistance that spread through the ranks during the war.[5]

Antiwar protests and acts of resistance occurred at or near military bases through the military in those years. These included demonstrations, picketing, vigils and the circulation of antiwar petitions. The most famous petition appeared as a full page ad in the New York Times the week before the historic Moratorium Mobilization in Washington DC of November 15, 1969. The ad covered the back page of the Sunday Week in Review section of the Times. Its demand to ‘end the war,’ and ‘bring us home now’ was signed by 1365 active duty service members. Hundreds of active duty soldiers participated in the Mobilization march in Washington that weekend.

Troops stationed in Vietnam often sympathized with the antiwar movement back home. During the fall 1969 Moratorium mobilizations, combat troops on patrol near Da Nang wore black armbands in solidarity with the protests.^[6] In 1971 Vietnam Veterans Against the War circulated a petition to Congress among troops in Vietnam demanding an end to U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. The petition was signed by hundreds of active-duty soldiers before being confiscated by commanders.^[7]

As the GI movement spread, civilian supporters and recent veterans helped the movement by creating GI coffeehouses outside major military bases in the United States, Europe and Asia. More than two coffeehouses were in operation in 1971.[8]  The coffeehouses featured free coffee, live music, counterculture posters and newspapers, antiwar literature and art work. They also served as centers of political education and antiwar organizing. 

All across the military active duty service members were engaging in acts of dissent and resistance. A 1970 social science survey of soldiers at several military bases in the U.S. found that one quarter of the interviewees admitted to engaging in acts of dissent, defined as participating in a protest, reading a GI antiwar newspaper or going to an antiwar coffeehouse.[9]

These figures are roughly equivalent to the proportion of activists among students at the time.[10]

The resistance

Equally prevalent in the military during the Vietnam War were acts of disobedience and defiance of authority. One of the most common and significant forms of GI resistance was absence without leave. Absentee and desertion rates during the Vietnam War soared to record levels. The desertion rate in the Army increased 400 per cent between 1966 and 1971.[11] In 1971 the AWOL rate in the Army (those absent from duty for less than 30 days) was 17 per cent, affecting one of every six soldiers. The official desertion rate (those absent for more than thirty days) was 7 per cent.  This meant that more than 70,000 Army soldiers deserted that year, the equivalent of several divisions. Desertion rates also rose in the Marine Corps, reaching 6.5 per cent in 1972. Vietnam-era desertion rates were three times those of the Korean War.[12] The massive wave of AWOL and desertion during the war deprived the military of about one million person-years of service.[13] As Moser writes, this widespread unauthorized absence of troops “forcibly curtailed military capabilities and contributed to the aura of chaos that hung over the armed forces by the early 1970s.”[14]

The most consistently rebellious and antiwar troops in Vietnam and throughout the military were African Americans. Influenced by the civil rights movement and growing black militancy at home, African American troops tended to group together (the ‘bloods’ they often called themselves) and posed a significant challenge to the military’s mostly white power structure.[15] Many black GIs opposed the war but they also resisted the pervasive racism that existed in the military in those years.

Many major racial uprisings occurred in the military during the Vietnam War. One of the largest and most explosive was the prison rebellion at Long Binh Jail at Bien Hoa northeast of Saigon in August 1968.[16] The uprising in the overcrowded prison left dozens of prisoners injured, and one soldier died. Much of the prison was burned to the ground.[17] The largest in the Marine Corps occurred at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in the summer of 1969 when African American and Puerto Rican combat veterans rebelled against unequal treatment and racial abuse.[18] Travis Air Force base in California witnessed the largest mass rebellion in the history of the Air Force in May 1971. More than 600 airmen were drawn into the brawl, an officers’ club was burned to the ground, and dozens of troops were injured.[19] For several days this vital center of military transport for the Vietnam War was in a virtual state of siege as commanders sought to end the violence and restore order. The most serious racial uprising in the Navy occurred in October 1972 aboard the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, as a violent clash between African American sailors and members of the ship’s Marines left 46 injured.[20]

The “Quasi-Mutiny”

The waves of resistance coursing through the military in those years came together and were magnified in the crucible of Vietnam. Incidents of organized dissent were relatively rare, but acts of direct resistance were pervasive and tore at the very fabric of military capability.  By 1970 the Army and Marine Corps in Vietnam were experiencing what I have described as the “quasi-mutiny”: widespread defiance, intentional incompetence and various other forms of noncooperation that effectively crippled the military’s operational capacity.[21] Moser called this the “grunts’ ceasefire”: acts of resistance by a significant minority of troops that undermined the military’s ability to wage war.[22]

The most significant form of resistance to the war was combat refusal.[23] Several were prominently reported in the press. On August 26, 1969 the headline on the front page of the New York Daily News blared “Sir, My Men Refuse to Go!” with the subtitle “Weary Viet GIs Defy Order.”[24] The article told the story of sixty soldiers in an Army company near Da Nang who refused direct orders from their commander. Another incident of combat refusal was captured by CBS News in April 1970 when a company of the 7^th Cavalry balked at the order of their gung-ho Captain to march down a jungle path the troops considered too risky.[25] Other known incidents of mutiny occurred during the Cambodia invasion in May 1970 and in March 1971 when U.S. troops were ordered to support the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos.[26]

There were many additional unreported instances of combat refusal.  According to former Army combat commander Shelby Stanton, 35 incidents of combat refusal occurred in the 1^st Cavalry Division during 1970.[27]  Some of the incidents involved entire units. This was an extraordinarily high number of combat refusals, an average of three per month in just one division. If we extrapolate the experience of the 1^st Cavalry to the other six Army divisions in Vietnam at the time, it is likely that hundreds of mutinous events occurred in the latter years of the ground war. When commanders sent their units into the field, they could not be certain that the troops would follow orders. In the face of such resistance and noncooperation in the ranks, U.S. combat effectiveness melted away.

The most horrific indication of the breakdown of the armed forces was the prevalence of fragging, an attack with a fragmentation grenade.  The Army began keeping records on assaults with explosive devices in 1969. By July 1972, with the last troops on their way out of Vietnam, the total number of fragging incidents had reached 551, with 86 fatalities and over 700 injuries.[28] The targets of these fragging attacks were mostly officers and noncommissioned officers.[29] The frequency of fragging in Vietnam War indicated an army at war with itself. It provides grim evidence of the anger and social decay that were tearing the military apart.

Opposing the Air War

As the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces accelerated in 1971, the Nixon administration compensated for diminished firepower on the ground with intensified bombing attacks from the air.[30] As sailors and airmen were ordered to participate in this onslaught, morale dropped and antiwar protest and resistance increased.  The number of GI antiwar papers in the Navy and Air Force increased sharply after 1970.[31] Organized antiwar protest began to emerge aboard several aircraft carriers. In 1971 junior officers and enlisted sailors aboard the U.S.S. Constellation based in San Diego organized an informal referendum against the ship’s scheduled deployment to Vietnam. Thousands of military service members in the area participated in the ballot and ‘voted’ for the Connie to stay home. A similar movement emerged in November 1971 in the San Francisco Bay Area to protest the sailing of the U.S.S Coral Sea from Alameda Naval Station. Approximately 1,200 sailors, one quarter of the crew, signed a petition protesting the deployment.[32]

Some antiwar sailors took matters into their own hands.  By 1971 acts of sabotage by crew members against their own ships became a serious problem in the Navy. Figures supplied to the House Internal Security Committee investigation of subversion within the military listed 488 acts of “damage or attempted damage” in the Navy during fiscal year 1971, including 191 incidents of sabotage, 135 arson attacks, and 162 episodes of “wrongful destruction.”[33]  The House Armed Services Subcommittee investigating disciplinary problems in the Navy disclosed “an alarming frequency of successful acts of sabotage and apparent sabotage on a wide variety of ships and stations.”[34]

Two major incidents occurred in July 1972 that had significant impact on the Navy’s ability to carry out its mission. A fire aboard the carrier U.S.S. Forrestal based in Norfolk burned the admiral’s quarters and extensively damaged the ship’s radar communication system, resulting in more than $7 million in damage. It was the largest single act of sabotage in naval history. [35] Later that month sabotage struck the carrier U.S.S. Ranger based in California. A few days before the ship’s scheduled departure for Vietnam, a paint scraper and two 12-inch bolts were dropped into one of the ship’s engine reduction gears. This caused major damage and a three and a half month delay in the ship’s sailing.[36]

Antiwar dissent and resistance also emerged in the Air Force. The number of GI papers at air bases jumped from 10 at the beginning of 1971 to 30 a year later.[37] Antiwar coffeehouses opened near several bases, and demonstrations and protest actions occurred at or near air bases in April and May 1972.  The staff of the House Internal Security Committee investigation observed a “trend towards organizing among U.S. Air Force personnel, in line with continued U.S. air activities in Indochina.”[38] Antiwar opposition in the Air Force intensified during the December 1972 bombing of Hanoi. Some B-52 bomber pilots began to question their mission, and two joined Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman of New York in filing a law suit to challenge the constitutionality of bombing Cambodia.[39]   

Conclusion

As outlined above, dissent and resistance were widespread in the military in the later years of the war. It is arguable that by 1970 U.S. ground troops in Vietnam had ceased to function as an effective fighting force. The disintegration of military morale was a factor in the Nixon administration’s decision to accelerate troop withdrawals.[40] Senior officers from Chief of Staff William Westmoreland on down were arguing for a faster pullout.[41] Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird reportedly returned from an inspection tour of Vietnam in early 1971 “shocked and distressed” by morale problems and in favor of more rapid force reductions.[42]

Revisionist historians argue that the military was winning the war in Vietnam and that it was a ‘stab in the back’ from politicians and the media that caused U.S. defeat. This ignores the fact that many within the military opposed the war and were increasingly unwilling to fight. The spread of antiwar dissent and resistance and the defiance of troops in Vietnam played a decisive role in limiting the U.S. ability to continue the war. The widespread resistance in American society and within the military itself placed limits on U.S. military capability and forced an end to the war.

---

[1] Robert Heinl, “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal, June 1971.

[2] Morris Janowitz, "Volunteer Armed Forces and Military Purpose," Foreign Affairs, April 1972, 428.

[3] See the discussion of this distinction in David Cortright and Max Watts, Left Face: Soldier Unions and Resistance Movements in Modern Armies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 19-22.

[4] In my book Soldiers in Revolt I documented 250 GI papers and estimated the total number at more than 300. Further research by James Lewes found more than one hundred additional GI papers. All known GI papers are now archived in the GI Press Project, an online digital archive housed at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. See David Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance during the Vietnam War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 1975, 2005); and James Lewes, Protest and Survive: Underground GI Newspapers during the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2003).

[5] Barbara L. Tischler, “Breaking Ranks: GI Antiwar Newspapers and the Culture of Protest,” Vietnam Generation, Special Issue: GI Resistance: Soldiers and Veterans Against the War, 2, No. 1 (1990), 20-50.

[6] “Some G.I.’s in Vietnam Join Protest,” New York Times, October 16, 1969, 22.

[7] Overseas Weekly (Pacific edition), October 30, 1971, and November 6, 1971.

[8] Richard Moser, The New Winter Soldiers: G.I. and Veteran Dissent during the Vietnam Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 99.

[9] Howard C. Olson and R. William Rae, Determination of the Potential for Dissidence event in the U.S. Army, Technical Paper RAC-TP-410 (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corporation, March 1971); R. William Rae, Stephen B. Forman and Howard C. Olson, Future Impact of Dissident Elements Within the Army, Technical Paper RAC-TP-441 (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corporation, January 1972).

[10] Richard Moser, The New Winter Soldiers, 132.

[11] Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Random House, 1978), 122.

[12] All figures for desertion rates drawn from statistics provided to the author by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Magazine and Book Branch, 1973, as published in Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, 11-15.

[13] Baskir and Strauss, Chance and Circumstance, 122.

[14] Moser, The New Winter Soldiers, 80.

[15] See the classic work by Wallace Terry, Bloods, Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History (New York: Random House, 1984).

[16] Moser, The New Winter Soldiers, 51-52.

[17] Cecil Barr Currey, Long Binh Jail: An Oral History of Vietnam’s Most Notorious U.S. Military Prison (Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2001).

[18] Flora Lewis, “The Rumble at Camp Lejeune,” Atlantic, January 1970, 35-41.

[19] Senior Airman Nicole Leidholm, “Race Riots Shape Travis’ History, Travis Air Force Base, news story, updated 11/8/2013, at http://www.travis.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123370166

[20] See the account of John Darrell Sherwood, Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet During the Vietnam War Era (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

[21] Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, 28-49.

[22] Moser, The New Winter Soldiers, 132.

[23] Christian Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 242.

[24] The headline image is captured at http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/daily-news-front-page-august-26-headline-sir-my-men-refuse-news-photo/453339726

[25] The CBS incident was reported in Newsweek magazine, April 20, 1970, 51, and May 25, 1970, 45.

[26] See Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, 36-38.

[27] Shelby L. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965-1973 (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1985), 349.

[28] Congressional Quarterly, "Problems in the Ranks: Vietnam Disenchantment, Drug Addiction, Racism Contribute to Declining Morale," in The Power of the Pentagon (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1972), 22.

[29] Hearings Before the Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 92nd Congress, 1st Session, Part 9, 585.

[30] Michael Clodfelter, Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars 1772-1991 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995).

[31] Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, Appendix B, 322-23.

[32] Ibid., 111-112.

[33] "Investigation of Attempts to Subvert the United States Armed Services," Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives, 92nd Congress, 1^st and 2^nd Sessions, 1972, II, 7051.

[34] Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the U.S. Navy of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 92^nd Congress, 2^nd Session, 17670 and 17684.

[35] “Navy Says Sailor Confessed He Set Blaze on Carrier,” New York Times, November 28, 1972, p. 18; and “Seaman is Guilty in Carrier Blaze,” New York Times, December 8, 1972, p. 18.

[36] “Sailor is Freed by Navy Board in Trial on Sabotage of Carrier,” New York Times, June 13, 1973, p. 5; Village Voice, February 1, 1973, p. 16.

[37] Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, 131.

[38] "Staff Analysis of Recent Trends in GI Movement Organizing Activities, December, 1971-April, 1972," in House Internal Security Files.

[39] “Air Force Takes 3 Officers Off Cambodia Runs,” New York Times, June 6, 1973, p. 10; “U.S. Judge Here Says Bombing of Cambodia is ‘Unauthorized,’” New York Times, July 26, 1973, p. 4.

[40] Stewart Alsop, Newsweek, December 7, 1970, p. 104.

[41] Time, January 25, 1971, p. 34; “Army in Anguish,” Washington Post, September 15, 1971, p. 8.

[42] San Francisco Examiner, January 17, 1971.

Personal Comments About the PBS Vietnam Series and Station Practices

Donald Voth

There is a glaring error in segment 5.  While discussing the rise of president Ngo Dinh Diem, narrator says, as I recall "There has never been a separate, southern government of Vietnam." Anyone who knows even the most elementary stuff about the history of Vietnam knows that, starting in 1558, the southern, Nguyen, dynasty was established in direct conflict with the Trinh dynasty in the north, and that they fought each other more or less regularly, from 1600 until 1800, and that the southern regime actually became a dynamic and wealthy state, completely overwhelming the Trinh dynasty in the North.  Else what the hell was Hue about?  It's so obvious I surely don't need to cite sources, eh?  The error is not trivial, it must surely be celebrated by the current regime in Hanoi, which seeks to downplay any and all accomplishments by the southern Nguyen dynasty whenever possible.

Donald E. Voth, Ph. D.
Professor of Rural Sociology, Emeritus
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
4323 Balcon Ct., NW
Albuquerque, NM  87120

Louis Wolf

While I found the
series quite positive in terms of the unique Vietnamese
war footage included demonstrating that Ken Burns & Co.
had gone to some lengths to include it, I found the section
about the Tonkin Gulf incident severely thin and did not even
mention that official U.S. government documents prove that
the incident was not caused by Vietnamese navy vessel/s
shooting at the American ship, a fact hidden and kept secret
for many years. Rather, the incident was the basis for
the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which launched the war that
lasted for three decades, resulting in the deaths of some
millions of Vietnamese, 58,00 U.S. servicemen killed, and the
lingering effects of Agent Orange in both countries.

The other piece which was virtually left out of the series was
the 'secret wars' in both Laos and Cambodia, which also caused
the deaths of additional millions in both countries. Also
missing was any treatment of the continuing presence in both
countries of unexploded ordnance which the U.S. left behind.
In both countries, the Central Intelligence Agency was a central
architect of the wars by secretly arming, training and supplying
the brutal Khmer Rouge forces of Pol Pot in Cambodia, and by creating
and supporting the mercenary Hmong secret army in Laos. It is
no coincidence that measured in terms of the per capita population, the tonnage of ordnance
dropped there by the U.S. Air Force made Laos the most bombed country
in the entire history of warfare. Moreover, the Air Force used Laos
as a virtual laboratory for the secret use of chemical weapons, including
the highly toxic Agent Orange and Agent Blue.

I hope the agenda will include an ongoing effort to effectively
counter the Pentagon's semi-public pet project of rewriting
the history of the Vietnam War, reportedly costing American
taxpayers some $15 million.

Louis Wolf

louw7@live.com


Neville Williams


I thought I was over Vietnam 40 years ago, although I've known America is never "over Vietnam" as Ken Burns relates in his comprehensive 10-part, 18-hour PBS series on the war.

This is the best war documentary since "Victory at Sea." It is also the best antiwar film ever made, and the best thing Burns has ever done. Words fail me when I try to praise what Burns accomplished (an eleven-year-long production). It is the most magnificent television journalism I've seen in the past 50 years. It leaves the viewer with no other conclusion that this was one great war crime from start to finish; this is not a version of history the public has accepted -- until now, if they watched this, and millions did.

Along with many friends who suffered through the war as soldiers, as US officials, as antiwar leaders, or, like myself, as war correspondents, I said I can't watch this. I'd already seen all the documentaries on Vietnam I ever wanted to see and read all the books on the war I ever needed to read. I had given 200 of my Vietnam books to George Washington University and all my writings and files on the war and the draft etc. to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. I was SO done with Vietnam, and never looked back after helping organize the "War Is Over" celebration in Central Park in May of 1975 with Phil Ochs, Cora Weiss, and Carl Rogers.

But I did watch it, with my wife, who wanted to learn what really went on during all those crazy years. Once we started watching, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

First, Peter Coyote is the best narrator there is. Second, it's extremely well written, the narration underpinned by the most amazing footage of all aspects of the war I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of it. Turns out, I'd seen very little. A third of the footage comes from the North Vietnamese, their army, the NLF, and foreign journalists and TV cameramen. Much of it has never been shown before. All 18 hours is accompanied by music from our era. (I'll never forget waking up to Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now" on many a morning in Saigon being broadcast over Armed Forces Radio.)

The series misses nothing. I can't offer a single criticism of the content, the facts, the history, or the delivery, and I was ready not to like it. The first three and half hours covers the years from the late 40's to 1965 explaining how we got into the war. For most of us, the war started with the Marines landing in Danang in 1965, but there is 15 to 20 years of history -- and US meddling in the country -- prior to that. After Mao proclaimed the People's Republic in 1949, and Stalin continued with his iron rule, and Eastern Europe "went communist," it was inevitable that we would draw the line somewhere, and that line was Vietnam, after the French left in 1953.

But while the war made perfect sense historically, it didn't make any sense to our generation, especially when the draft was instituted. What is extraordinary about the film is that it is fair to everyone involved in the war at all levels, on all sides, but it leaves one with the full knowledge that the Vietnam War (or the American War as the Vietnamese call it) of the stupidity, the evil, and criminality of this misbegotten enterprise. We all knew it at the time, but now everyone can know it. The film clearly identifies the criminals -- at all levels. Instead of featuring antiwar leaders, it uses interviews from soldiers, officers, policy-makers, and journalists on all sides to tell the story. And no one interviewed for the program "on our side" defended the war, its purpose, or its prosecution. There are plenty of antiwar leaders, from Allard Lowenstein to Jerry Rubin to Jane Fonda, and even an army deserter, whom I knew in Canada, who get their brief licks in; there as lots of footage of antiwar marches from the Pentagon to London to the New Mobe, and then there is Kent State.

Burns makes it very clear that divisions in America today are the direct result of fighting, and losing, that war. We will never be over Vietnam.

Neville Williams
October 2017

(Williams is the author of The New Exiles [1971], and a retired solar energy company CEO.)



Walter Teague

"Winning the Hearts and Minds of the People!"

As a veteran and anti-war activist since 1964, viewing most of Ken Burn’s documentary The Vietnam War I am worried not so much about the content or quality of the film, but about its long term effect on the public’s understanding and acceptance of the current and future such wars.

Most of the reviews especially by other veterans of the war and anti-war movement, agree the film is flawed and point out historical and political discrepancies. Most also recognize that Burns presents a middle-of-the-road position and he admits his aim is to resolve the conflicts the war left in the U.S.

While most critics focus on the films accuracy or focus and hope the film will provide a base for further understanding, few discuss the likely ongoing effect on a public which knows little of the US war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and is often accepting or confused about the current seven ongoing wars. My observation is that efforts by veterans and critics have not been allowed equal time at film previews nor can they compete with the massive public hype around this historic event.

The film does show much of the ugliness of U.S. motives and actions. But will showing these flaws and U.S. bias help or prevent most U.S. viewers to develop a full awareness of the troubling lessons? Will the weaknesses and omissions of the film succeed in smoothing over the more vile and aggressive causes of the U.S. aggression and conduct of the war? Will this film by excusing U.S. aggression and war crimes make it easier for the U.S. government to continue and expand its current and future wars?

So the more serious question is not is this a good and accurate film, but will this film help prevent such tragic and immoral U.S. war crimes past, present and future? Will this film help prevent more wars by revealing to the average viewer, the true causes and horrors?

Therefore I have 2 major disagreements with the argument that the film should be judged separately from its public affect.

1st, it is not just a film. Many reviews focus on the discrepancies with the facts and interpretations of the political history. This approach supports the conclusion that this film series can and should be something to build on. I agree we should build upon the film since it will be a major public event whatever its weaknesses, but because the film is likely to dominate public opinion, it is all the more important we consider what the overall political impact will be and what can be done to mitigate the damage.

2nd, will it really promote peace? Most of the reviews and critiques of the film are from those who already know a great deal about these issues. However the most important impact of this film is not as entertainment or even a historical record, but its special and likely massive potential impact on the general public’s awareness and interpretation of the meaning of that war. In a time of ongoing wars and charges of war crimes, the U.S. Pentagon recognizes the public’s view of the Vietnam War can influence public support or opposition for its current and future wars. Therefore the Pentagon has initiated a massive 13 year campaign to present and organize public awareness to support the Pentagon’s point of view.1 In the middle of this massive Pentagon campaign to re-write the Vietnam War history and white-wash the war crimes and anti-war movements, PBS’s 18 hour series will play again and again and become an important part of the public’s education.
Is there any question whether this film’s effect will agree with the Pentagon’s view or be counter to it and even if it helps to educate the public? How effectively it builds support or opposition to ongoing wars will be the major test of this film series.

And then will this film help or hinder the pentagon’s effort by rewriting the history of this war to protect the US from any quilt or blame for its past and continuing war crimes?1

At a time when the President surrounds himself with generals and actions that risk adding major wars in Asia and Africa to the ongoing 7 wars so little understood or opposed by the general public, I am reminded of that phrase we all remember, "winning the hearts and minds of the people!"

Since the US public is the real target and their reactions will determinant the effectiveness of this film, we should ask how will this film influence the less informed public. Will it reveal that the U.S. intentionally started the war for only slightly hidden Imperial purposes? Will it reveal the many systemic war crimes detailed in the pentagon papers and discussed in Congress? Will this film help change the views of those who have heard for 50 years how we should have won the war and it was a mistake not to support the troops? Will they finally realize they were being massively lied to just as they have been lied to since? Will it build opposition or support for the ongoing and new wars?

The reviews I’ve read fall into two general categories, those who consider The Vietnam War as a portrayal of a major error and the others including a spectrum of those who see the war as a major moral crime that should teach us to guard against those who try to rationalize or recreate such wars. Today most of us know not to trust the Pentagon, but how many will be deluded by Ken Burns into agreeing that the war was started by people with good intentions?

The public’s awareness is likely to be split since most know little about the facts or causes of the war. Using this film to teach one-on-one, many of us could easily debunk and correct the glaring historic distortions and counter the pentagon's 50th anniversary effort. But if those of us who are opposed to the U.S. claims and actions that led to this terrible war, soft pedal our responses, it is very unlikely we will have an opportunity to protect the larger public from once again being misled by what I believe is a major propaganda documentary.

1. http://www.vietnamwar50th.com/

Walter Teague, 9-16-17
wteague@verizon.net