PBS Vietnam War Documentary – Commentary on Episode Eight

Episode Eight, “The History of the World,” covers the period May 1969-December 1970.  This period is marked by President Nixon’s decision to make a series of withdrawals of US troops under the policy rubric of Vietnamization, sputtering secret talks and negotiations, increased popular frustration and anger over the ongoing war, the largest anti-war demonstrations in U.S. history, the.invasion of Cambodia, and  a more public, politicized focus on American Prisoners of War.

The June 27 1969 issue of Life Magazine carried the names and individual photos of 242 American soldiers killed in Vietnam in one week  David Halberstam commented that those photos “probably had more impact on anti-war feeling than any other piece of print journalism.” A year later, as a result of U.S. troop withdrawals and the policy of Vietnamization, while fewer Americans were dying in Vietnam, an estimated 300 Vietnamese were being killed every day.

In a month long project, the Daily Death Toll, cosponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Clergy and Laity Concerned, 300 persons came to Washington, DC each day from a different city or town. After visiting their Congressional offices advocating for cutting off funding for the war, they gathered in front of the White House and lay down in the driveway where they were arrested. There was consistently good newspaper and T.V. coverage in the city or town from which the 300 had come that day. One would think that this action and hundreds of other creative anti-war protests would have gotten more attention in this film about the Vietnam war and what was happening at home

Not all protests were as creative or communicated in a such a clear way. Some were combined with the broader generational rebellion of the 1960s against authority, for new sexual freedom, use of mind-altering drugs, and celebrated in great folk and rock-n-roll music. While most of all that was not harmful to most participants, the mixture often didn’t help offer a clear message to millions of Americans still making up their minds about the war. Photos from Woodstock in the documentary remind us of why people may have been confused by some of the protests and protesters.

While organized by miniscule numbers relative to millions of Americans who were against the war by 1969, some protests, including the “Days of Rage”.in Chicago and attacks on some banks and labs associated with weapons of war were violent. These actions were decidedly delusional and counterproductive. By the summer of 1969, there also were violent protests by men in the military, in the form of “fraggings” of gung-ho officers who seemed intent on getting more of their men killed, even as Nixon ordered more American troops to come home. Both among civilians and soldiers there was growing frustration, anger and desperation to end the war that more and more people believed was continuing based on lies and lack of political courage.

1969-1970 were years that saw the largest anti-war protests in the history of the country. The Vietnam Moratorium was a call for people to interrupt ordinary work or school on the 15^th of every month to organize some form of protest against the war. On October 15, more than a million people participated in a wide variety of events across the country, including marches, rallies, teach-ins and strikes.. A month later on November 15 500,000 people gathered at the Washington Monument in D.C and another 250,000 in San Francisco, calling for an end to the war and immediate U.S. withdrawal from  Vietnam.

 

For two days preceding the mass march in Washington 38,000 people walked in a continuous single file from Arlington Cemetery to the Capitol carrying the names of men from their home state who had been killed in Vietnam and calling out the names as they passed by the White House. The protest was called the March Against Death and was memorialized in a poster by Pablo Picasso

On May 1 1970 the United States invaded Cambodia. Response on campuses across the country was swift and intense. New Mobilizaion leaders who organized the November 15 1969 March called for people to come to Washington on Saturday May 9. 100,000 people, most of them students came. 250 handed over their Draft Cards to be taken to Saigon, where a Vietnamese student leader, Buddhist monk and Catholic Priest would participate in burning them. On May 4 at Ken State in Ohio four students  protesting the war were killed by National Guard. Ten days later two student war protesters were killed at Jackson State in Mississippi.

There are plenty of people in their sixties, seventies, eighties and probably several in their nineties who helped plan, lead and participated in the anti-war protest movement during the decade of the war. The PBS documentary would have been better, more complete, more complicated and, yes, maybe a bit more controversial if  Burns and  Novick had selected a dozen of them, instead of just one, Bill Zimmerman, to offer comments on developments in Vietnam and at home during those years as they did with many veterans.

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 In addition to Vietnamization and the invasion of Cambodia, another important and controversial initiative by President Nixon revealed in this episode of the film was his decision to make the issue of American Prisoners of War in Vietnam much more public and political. At times, It even seemed that Nixon was claiming we were still fighting the war to bring home our POWs, when it was obvious that the way to get our POWs back home was to end the war.

This issue is an example of another opportunity missed by Burns and Novick to help explain what was happening at home.  The U.S refused to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As a result, the International Red Cross was not able to perform its traditional role of serving as a liaison between prisoners and their families back home. Cora Weiss and other leaders of the anti-war movement formed a Committee of Liaison which regularly carried mail between the America POWs and their families. COL delegations, including one in which I participated in December 1970 were able to visit with several of the prisoners and, in a few cases, bring an American soldier or two home.

One of the prisoners we met with told us that he had never been in Vietnam or met a Vietnamese until his fighter bomber was shot down over the Noerh. He flew off a carrier in the South China sea.   When he landed in a field by parachute, he broke his ankle. Vietnamese peasants surrounded him and, after a brief argument about what to do, they bandaged his ankle and carried him a few hundred yards and down into an underground bunker. Within minutes a wave of B-52s began their bombing run over the area. This young American said he’d never experienced a B-52 bombing raid from the ground before and he wouldn’t want anyone else to experience that ever again. It would have been good to see this former Prisoner of War interviewed in the film.

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The story of the Committee of Liaison was certainly an important one to be told in relation to who cared and who did anything to help our POWs during the war. Cora and the Committee’s work get very brief mention in Episode Nine on a feature page, the dramatic focus of which is a photo of Jane Fonda sitting and expressing solidarity with a North Vietnamese artillery battery. Burns and Novick knew exactly what they were doing in portraying that connection. That page may understandably anger some veterans but it also insults the intelligence and moral courage of many veterans who fought the war and many veterans of the anti-war movement.