COMMENT POSTED TO A REVIEW BY TIM DOWLING IN THE GUARDIAN
The Vietnam War review
– Ken Burns makes a complex story immediately comprehensible
This is the second review of Ken Burns in just a few days.
I cannot agree with this reviewer's "The Vietnam War
review – Ken Burns makes a complex story immediately comprehensible"
I am familiar with the work of Burns, and his glossy, pop
documentaries cannot do what is claimed for a profound and disturbing event.
Baseball, maybe. Hell, no, and the Vietnam War was a jump straight into hell.
_______________________
Response to a reader
who said “After watching last night it struck me the real baddies were the
French?”
The French were supported and encouraged and pushed every
step of the way by America.
Nixon, as Vice-President, actually wanted to provide direct
American air support for their efforts.
Eisenhower wasn't having any of that because he always tried
to avoid direct military colonial conflicts to preserve his image - it was
under Eisenhower that the Allen Dulles' CIA was heavily used to covertly attack
people America didn't like, from overthrowing democratic governments in
Guatemala and Iran to other governments in a dozen other places. Old smiling
Ike was responsible for the growth of the ugly CIA we see today.
Anyway, Eisenhower gave the French everything he thought he
could, and by Kennedy's election (1960), the CIA was deeply entrenched in
Vietnam as were a fair number of military "advisors." The (temporary)
division of the country, after the French defeat and departure (1954), was
itself an American-engineered business.
America wanted a pied-a-terre in mainland Asia, and the
whole war which burst out with Lyndon Johnson was nothing more than an effort
to establish that permanently. The military-intelligence establishment had been
very frustrated by Kennedy's approach to Vietnam. When he conveniently died,
they had their man in Lyndon Johnson.
But he had to get elected on his own first, and he lied his
way through doing that – remember the controversial ad of a young girl with a
flower and an atomic explosion, an ad aimed at Barry Goldwater saying he was a
threat to peace? - before starting the full-scale war he hungered for, wanting
to be seen as a great war-president, a new Roosevelt, never dreaming America
would be defeated.
