Are PBS and Ken Burns about to Rewrite History Again?

[JJ_BPK]

Heads Up

Are PBS and Ken Burns about to Rewrite History Again?
By Stephen Sherman

PBS is planning to run a new documentary series this September on the Vietnam War, produced and written by Ken Burns. Burns is a left-wing "historian" and documentary film producer with a history of having his politics shape the narrative of the story he is telling, with a number of resulting inaccuracies.

Ken Burns correctly identifies the Vietnam War as being the point at which our society split into two diametrically opposed camps. He is also correct in identifying a need for us to discuss this aspect of our history in a civil and reflective manner. The problem is that the radical political and cultural divisions of that war have created alternate perceptions of reality, if not alternate universes of discourse. The myths and propaganda of each side make rational discourse based on intellectual honesty and goodwill difficult or impossible. The smoothly impressive visual story Burns will undoubtedly deliver will likely increase that difficulty. He has done many popular works in the past, some of which have been seriously criticized for inaccuracies and significant omissions, but we welcome the chance of a balanced treatment of the full history of that conflict. We can only wait and watch closely when it goes public.

The term "Vietnam War" itself, although accepted in common parlance, would more accurately be called "The American Phase of the Second Indochina War" (1965 to 1973). The U.S. strategic objectives in Vietnam must also be accurately defined. There were two inter-related goals: 1) to counter the Soviet and Red Chinese strategy of fostering and supporting "Wars of National Liberation" (i.e., violent Communist takeovers) in third-world nations, and 2) to defend the government of the Republic of (South) Vietnam from the military aggression directed by its Communist neighbor, the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam.

link:

link: A source of Nam publications by Steve and others

[Noah Werka]

Ken Burns and PBS

[PSM]

I didn't get past the first episode of The Dust Bowl. I knew most of the people he interviewed but there was a stadium full that he did not interview who didn't work for the government at the time. I recorded a 9 hour interview with my grandmother, who lived through the Dust Bowl (and my mother was a youg girl at the time), and comparing her observations and the ones he dug up, they were night and day. The FSA photographers and Steinbeck set the narrative. It was bad, but not nearly as bad as they portrayed. How else would the people that he did interview have remained there 60+ years on?

I don't know much about the history of Baseball, so I did enjoy that program.

Pat

[Mustang Man]

Arguments offered by the so-called "anti-war" movement in the United States were predominantly derived from Communist propaganda. Most of them have been discredited by subsequent information, but they still influence the debate. They include the nonfactual claims that:

1) the war in South Vietnam was an indigenous civil war,

2) the U.S. effort in South Vietnam was a form of neo-colonialism, and

3) the real U.S. objective in South Vietnam was the economic exploitation of the region.

Never watched or read anything of Ken Burns, I'll give his show a chance in September and write a little review on it here when it's released. These all are just my condensed opinions and knowledge of Vietnam and where we are today.

I relate points 2 & 3 with the French and NOT the U.S.. Not pertaining to the United States involvement, but to the French immediatly after World War II. With the Atlantic Charter in place, many European allies still sought to reclaim their old territories in order to rebuild themselves. Truman was now in a conundrum, would he stand up to the French going against the Atlantic Charter or throw former OSS American ally Ho-Chi Minh under the bus?

And here we see a foreign policy blow back. Truman gave the French the green light due to the rise of communism influence their weak government was experiencing. Europe was clearly more important than South Asia. So after already fighting Japense imperialism with the U.S., now the Vietnamese must fight off the French. The Vietnamese leaned towards communism due to nationalistic concerns and not as a hatred against the West or Captialism.

Entering Esinhower, he did his best to avoid a war with Vietnam. He actually refused to aid the French with air power they requested at Dien-Bien Phu, thus leading to French defeat in 1954. Now the Geneva Accords was signed splitting Vietnam into two. Knowing a major conventional war in the jungle was unwinnable, Eisonhower starts sending advisors (SF), and props up the Catholic anti-commie leader Diem for the South. Diem eventually gets over thrown in the South, due to his attacks and tortures against Buddhists.

With Kennedy, LBJ, and democrats concerned of being labeled to soft on communists.The failures of the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongooese, and Ortsac stained the Kennedy administration and McNamara now saw Vietnam as a proving ground. The Gulf of Tonking incident happens (a false flag) giving LBJ the ability to launch his full scale war. Knowing how unpopular the war was, Nixon enters and promises to end it and decrease the presence of US troops. Rather he lied to the American people, invading and bombing two additonal countries.

I understand the the issue of never invading North Vietnam, however the Korean War became a lesson for policy makers after the Chinese cut off U.S. forces while crossing into North Korea. This was applied and probable during Vietnam, by now China also has nuclear weapons. WWIII could have been birthed from that bitch of a war Vietnam. Would the risk/reward had paid off if the U.S. ever invaded the North? We may never know.

But then Congress undermined the agreement by cutting the replacement material promised to our ally and codified in the agreement. That same Congress further nullified the accords by forbidding the use of any U.S. air power to punish egregious North Vietnamese violations of the agreements. Those members of Congress should have known what the result of their actions would be but never acknowledged it. Thus, the North Vietnamese leader boasted then that "the Americans will not come back now even if we offer them candy." With massive support from Moscow and two years of very detailed preparations, the fate of South Vietnam was sealed.

With all the never ending time and money spent, Congress eventually had to draw the line. What Vientam taught us from a foreign policy perspective, is how much power the president had to keep waging a never ending war. Thus the War Powers Act in 1973 gets implemented, where the President must notify Congress and have a vote before commiting to military intervention. Now we are experiencing the very same issues and debates with the Global War on Terror that have no end in sight. Eisenhower was right with the military industrial complex, it is very real and will eventually bring down the United States if not acknowledged or confronted by by our public and politicians. All just my 2 cents.

[Streck-Fu]

I have as few ken Burns shows to include The Civil War and Baseball (I own both). I do think that he went a bit soft on the Civil War but through the heavy screen time of Shelby Foote gives a fair account of how Lincoln wanted war and that it wasn't to 'preserve slavery'..

I also enjoyed his show on Lewis and Clark. I thought it was well done.

His show in the Roosevelts didn't hold many punches when it came to their issues as a family but still found a way to be supportive of Progressive politics. I didn't enjoy it as mush mostly because it iritated me to revisit how they really fucked this country.

And I remember Prohibition being Ok. It accounted well how Women's Suffrage movement paved the way for Prohibition and the "Holy shit! That's banned too!" reactions. It also seemed to cover well that Prohibition could not happen without an income tax and that repeal was tied to the government wanting to restore alcohol tax revenue.