I'd also like to recommend the Ken Burns "The Vietnam War," which can be found on PBS. It is amazingly well done and the depth of it is beyond most documentaries. For example, there is one episode (1.5+ hours) that covers a six month period from 1967 to '68.
I was a small child during the war (10 in '68) and (to be truthful) only somewhat remember watching the coverage on TV. My mother said I used to ask her if I was going to have to go fight there and that I didn't want to. Thankfully, I didn't. The war ended in '75. I had just turned 17.
Strangely, the My Lai massacre is not covered until a later episode. They slotted it in the time line where it was first reported --not when it actually happened. But be patient, they do get to it eventually.
The sobering part about the series is that it absolutely captures the stupidity, futility, and mismanagement of the war over such a long period of time. The huge waste on both sides. The scale of it was staggering.
Myself, I am always drawn to the jungle patrols and the combat portions, which are fierce, terrifying and totally engulfing. I can see why certain people are drawn to war. It's the ultimate video game. Everything is on the line. You have no idea what the enemy will do and (really, in the end) no idea what you will do when faced with that visceral terror and excitement. What a rush it must be! And how horrible too. I am in inveterate coward. I don't believe I would have gone if called, but my 17 year old self is someone I don't really know anymore.
Anyway, the series is great and I highly recommend it.
Seconded. I just made it through the whole 20 hour series and it was sobering. I never learned very much about this significant war in American history (I am American).
To think that we started this war to help an ally (France) maintain their colonial power over people who wanted to be free, and then stayed in it because it would look bad, is horrific. Nixon even interfered with peace talks before he was elected to make sure he’d have a better chance of being elected, and that fact was seen as so damaging that those in power decided to keep it the American people in the dark. A presidential candidate interfered with the peace process to get elected and the American people weren’t even told about it.
And then the massacres. So much humanity was lost. Not just in the massacres but in the battles for a war that didn’t need to be fought.
The Vietnam war is such a dark part of human history, and yet we barely talk about it. Or when we do, many people to this day believe the government lines they were being fed at the time of the war. That this was necessary, etc.
And now we have a president that threatens war and people support him in it. Hell Obama pushed war too and advanced many war efforts.
I wish we could stop all this killing. I mean - we could. I wish we would.
"The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam."
The Ken Burns doc is informational in some ways and a joke in others, particularly in the way it frames America's involvement from the outset as one of having been "sucked into" an unwanted war, a framing which is unsupported by historical evidence.
The reality is that the US systematically executed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and committed countless atrocities along the way including regularly torturing and raping civilians, as was documented by the American government. But this contrasts the the image of America as most people see it, which is why Burns saw it fit to exclude the full extent of US war crimes from his documentary.
I'm a little younger than you, born after the war ended. In the 80s, there was a weekly dramatized series called Tour of Duty that ran for a bit on one of the networks. Paint it Black was the shows theme song. Anyways, I was too young to watch it critically or remember if it had a message to it. Does it ring any bells?
Also, I read your comment after suggesting a video in a separate comment below. You might like it. Re how the press uncovered the event.
Seconded as well. I've yet to see the final episode, but so far it has been very good. As a non-US'an the Vietnam War was dealt with by a few paragraphs in the high school history books. Oh, and of course by watching movies like apocalypse now, full metal jacket, and, yes, Rambo 2. So it has certainly been very interesting to learn about the background, politics and the higher level military situation.
I don't know. It just bugs me when someone famous rehashes old material and gets credit for it.
As for My Lai, war atrocities are part of war, and that one wasn't anything special. It was actually the South Koreans (in Vietnam) who were the masters at it, though pointing that out does nothing to help the media's overarching agenda.
I was a small child during the war (10 in '68) and (to be truthful) only somewhat remember watching the coverage on TV. My mother said I used to ask her if I was going to have to go fight there and that I didn't want to. Thankfully, I didn't. The war ended in '75. I had just turned 17.
Strangely, the My Lai massacre is not covered until a later episode. They slotted it in the time line where it was first reported --not when it actually happened. But be patient, they do get to it eventually.
The sobering part about the series is that it absolutely captures the stupidity, futility, and mismanagement of the war over such a long period of time. The huge waste on both sides. The scale of it was staggering.
Myself, I am always drawn to the jungle patrols and the combat portions, which are fierce, terrifying and totally engulfing. I can see why certain people are drawn to war. It's the ultimate video game. Everything is on the line. You have no idea what the enemy will do and (really, in the end) no idea what you will do when faced with that visceral terror and excitement. What a rush it must be! And how horrible too. I am in inveterate coward. I don't believe I would have gone if called, but my 17 year old self is someone I don't really know anymore.
Anyway, the series is great and I highly recommend it.