I still think Ken Burn's The Civil War is one of the great TV documentaries, and I think Vietnam is, in some ways, better. On the technical front, I think there is great sound editing and mixing. A lot of scenes have the subtle thwop-thwop of helicopter blades turning, accompanied by a low bass or organ note, adding a little edge to the scene. Also, this guy must pay next to zero for music rights. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Ray Charles singing "America", the series is loaded with music.
My brother was a 17-year old Marine grunt in Vietnam in 1966. He was a radio operator. He used to tell me that half the time when he called in air support, they ended up bombing their own troops. After watching the documentary, I understood why. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese knew that the way to escape being bombed was to engage the Americans at close quarters, so that they couldn't call in air support. So a lot of the fighting was incredibly vicious and intense, at very close quarters.
The historical perspective is a hard lesson in American history. If I had to sum up the Americans mistakes in Vietnam with one word it would be hubris. Now hubris means arrogance, but the Greeks called hubris which led to the defiance of the Gods. War has been called a way that God teaches law to kings. The hubris of the United States in Vietnam was the belief that we could win a war with American firepower. The United States military was built to fight in military formations against other military formations. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had no interest in fighting that way, and moving in areas with large jungle canopies that rendered air support ineffective. There were no real front lines in the War. A hill would be fought over, hundreds of casualties on both sides. The Viet Cong would slip away, the Americans would take the hill, and then abandon it. You could push the VC out of an area, but when they left they melted away.
The other misreading of the war in Vietnam was to separate the Communists from National Liberation. In 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. It began with these words:
All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Sound familiar? But in the mindset of Americans in the cold war, Communism could not be a legitimate expression of National Liberation. After the United States 'lost' China to the Communists, each American President did not be the President to 'lose' Vietnam. When a trickle of advisers grew to 550,000 troops in country, the war seemed to closer to being won than before. But at each step along the way, the Presidents kept thinking that if they put in a little bit more, the Vietnamese would fold. But each time they raised, the Vietnamese called their raise.
Could the United States have won in Vietnam? Given the same political history, I would paraphrase what an American said about a Vietnamese village, that we had to destroy it in order to save it. The experience of an American soldier walking into a village in Vietnam: They know who you are. You have no idea who they are. You don't know the customs. People are terrified. Do they run because they're going to tell the VC or are they running because they are afraid? It's your life if you guess wrong. The metric the Americans used to show they were winning in a war without front lines was body counts. So if you killed someone, they became an enemy combatant. Bigger body count. On one of my brother's first patrols, they saw a man running away from them. Someone shot him in the back, rolled him over and put his cigarette out on his tongue. Welcome to the Marines.
The combat scenes in Vietnam really convey the terror of close quarter jungle fighting. And there are interviews with North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, South Vietnamese (ARVN) and Americans, so you get perspectives from all sides of battle. It was the closest I'll probably come to having an inkling of what my brother went through. Like most Vets, he would not talk about his experiences, saying 'I did things for which I'll never forgive myself".
My brother spent his life running from the things that he did and were done to him in Vietnam. He came back from the War a heroin addict. He sobered up in the last year of his life in 1988, but too much damage had been done to his body. He died of liver failure.
I was 3 years younger, and by my 18th birthday we had 3 more years of history as well as my brothers personal experience. I remember writing a paper against the war in 10th grade. I marched against the war, and manned a table during the Moratorium. My father paid for a draft doctor and lawyer. I got out on a 4F psychological deferment. So yes, I'm a draft dodger. The Vietnam was like the Civil war in that respect, but it never changed my relationship with my brother. I knew why he went, and he knew why I didn't. I can live with my own decision to have not joined the military. I think it was the right thing to do, and if I had to do it over I think I would pretty much behave the same way. Still, there is always a part of me that feels guilty. Somebody else's brother went instead of me. And for me, there is another thing, I would imagine that most boys and men wonder the same thing: How would I hold up? Could I make it though the experience? Thankfully it is a question that most young men do not have to answer.
Perhaps this is my perspective, but I think many of the fissures between Liberal and Conservative in the country began as Hawks (America: Love it or Leave it) or Doves (America: Change it or lose it). The Vietnam War was a deep scar in this nation's history. It was a defeat, and Americans don't like defeat. And tens of thousands Americans died because we were too proud to admit defeat, to admit that this country could not impose its will on another country.
Anyway, I highly recommend the Ken Burns documentary. See it if you have the chance.
