.The PBS Vietnam War documentary ten week series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick will be released nationwide on September17. Here is a link to the list of "What Stations Are Doing" in relation to the documentary. I encourage you to find ways that you.and your family and friends in other areas of the country can be involved in community responses. Ideas for how you can participate include writing an Op-Ed or Letter to the Editor, helping to arrange a panel at a church, synagogue, mosque or local Library, distributing the model flyer at your local station or other public venue, and working with Veterans for Peace. While there's a lot in the series that is positive, including visuals and interviews with diverse Americans and Vietnamese with very different views of the war, I fear that the imbalance of voices and the film's distorted historical framing of the war will keep us from learning lessons to help prevent future wars. Here is a Commentary I wrote after my wife and I attended a presentation by Burns and Novick in Seatlle, and a flyer we distributed to 1000 attendees. Many people who read the flyer expressed agreement or appreciation for the idea that "The American War in Vietnam Didn't Need to Happen," and no one expressed hostility. You're welcome to reproduce (or adapt) the Commentary and/or the Flyer for use in your area. Replies to "contact: vietnamlessons@gmai
Commentary on Previewing the PBS Vietnam War
Documentary
By Ron Young
At a preview of the PBS Vietnam War documentary,
while filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick presented visuals and voices of diverse
Americans and Vietnamese reflecting complex, different views of the war, I fear
the film’s imbalance of voices and distorted historical framing of the war will
keep us from learning essential lessons to help prevent future wars.
In the preview, we hear the voices of Nixon,
Agnew and Johnson defending the war but not the voices of Senators Morse and
Gruening who voted against the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This deceitful
resolution effectively authorized the war, just as forty years later the false claim
about Iraq having nuclear weapons provided the rationale for the disastrous U.S.
invasion. The preview, and my guess is the film itself, doesn’t give us the
voice of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam who got it right in
his 1964 book, The Making of a Quaqmire,
on why the American war in Vietnam was unwinnable.
In the documentary’s preview we hear agonized,
brave voices of young American soldiers who fought the war, more than 58,200 of
whom never came home, but not the voices of an estimated million or more who
went AWOL or deserted or voices of soldiers who courageously resisted and
risked imprisonment.
The worst distortion is Burns’ historically
inaccurate statement that at the war’s end, “a country (South Vietnam)
disappeared.” While Vietnamese had different political views then and do today,
Vietnam was and is one country. This was recognized in the 1954 Geneva Accords
that ended French colonial rule, temporarily divided the country into two
zones, and mandated Vietnam-wide elections in 1956, elections which the U.S.
imposed Diem regime refused. In truth, the war’s end marked Vietnam’s
independence. The country was finally free from decades of foreign domination.
The American war in Vietnam didn’t need to happen. On
February 28, 1946 Ho Chi Minh wrote to President Truman informing him how the
French were making preparations for returning French troops to Hanoi to make
Vietnam a colony again. Ho wrote urgently, “I
therefore earnestly appeal to you personally and to the American people. . .to
support our independence. . .in keeping with principles of the Atlantic
and San Francisco charters.”
President
Truman, blinded by Cold War ideology which pitted the U.S. against many
anti-colonial nationalist movements, never replied. Instead, the U.S. paid 80%
of France’s losing war costs. And then we spent $168 billion ($1 trillion in
2017 dollars) for the American War that robbed resources at home from the War
on Poverty and Great Society programs.
Burns
and Novick view their film as helping to create reconciliation over a war that
generated deep divisions among Americans. As South Africans understood in
creating their post-Apartheid commission, you can’t have reconciliation without
truth-telling. The truth is the American War in Vietnam was wrong. It was a
war, like the war in Iraq, that never should have happened.
During
the Vietnam War, as National Youth Secretary of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation (FOR), Ron resisted the draft, led an interfaith/interracial
mission to Saigon focused on repression, carried mail to American POW’s in
Hanoi, and coordinated national peace marches on Washington, DC in November
1969 and May 1970.
Ron
lives in Everett, WA and can be contacted at ronyoungwa@gmail.com. See FLYER below.
WHAT the WAR DOCUMENTARY WON’T SAY!
The
American
War in Vietnam Didn’t Need to Happen 58,220
Americans and 3 million Vietnamese didn’t need to die. All could be spared suffering from UXOs, Agent
Orange, PTSD and suicides.
In 1944, President
Roosevelt sent US OSS agents, including Mac Shin from Seattle, to assist Ho Chi
Minh’s forces in defeating the Japanese occupation, after which France tried to
reimpose its colonial control .
On February 28, 1946 Ho Chi Minh wrote to
President Truman.
On behalf of the Vietnam government and people, Ho informed the
President that the French were making preparations for returning French troops
to Hanoi to make Vietnam a colony again. Ho wrote, “I therefore earnestly appeal to
you personally and to the American people.
. .to support our independence. . .in
keeping with the principles of the Atlantic and San Francisco charters.”
President Truman, blinded by Cold War ideology which
pitted the U.S. against many anti-colonial nationalist movements, never
replied. Instead, the U.S. paid 80% of France’s losing war costs. And then we spent
$168 billion ($1 trillion in 2017 dollars) on the American War that robbed
resources at home from the War on Poverty and Great Society.
SAY IT! The American War
in Vietnam Was Wrong!
This war (and the war
in Iraq) Never Should Have Happened!
CONTACT: vietnamlessons@gmail.com
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