This episode covers the Tonkin Gulf incident and the arrival of US combat troops, in the 1964-65 time frame. That means there is plenty of combat to fill the time.

Once again, what was missing is more important than what was shown. Because what was missing would have given more weight and context to the anti-war movement. I am assuming that the narrative of this series is chronological. If he jumps back in time in later episodes, I will rethink these comments.

Here is what was missing:

1. The ongoing anti-nuclear protests, which had begun in Britain in the 1950s.

It was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmamaent (CND) who actually invented the "peace symbol", well before the Viet Nam War cranked up. The phrase "ban the bomb" was well-known in the 1960s. It has yet to appear in this documentary.

Mr. Burns stays well away from the Damoclean sword of nuclear war, and how it permeated everyone's thinking, just as deeply as the anti-communism of the era. Mr. Burns inserts the anti-communist meme constantly, but he only mentions the fear of nuclear anhiliation at peak moments of military confrontation. It was a pervasive background hum, and served to energize the anti-war movement in general. CND was an organization in place that was quickly repurposed to oppose the war. Mr. Burns cannot be bothered to mention it.

2. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963

This treaty simultaneously defused some of the anti-nuke fervor and also made conventional war seem a little less threatening. This landmark treaty showed that we could interact positively with the dreaded Communists.

3. The early (1963), massive Civil Rights demonstrations

These included the "March on Washington", which featured MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. Mr. Burns's token protester, Bill Zimmerman, is astonished to find 25,000 antiwar protestors. But the 250,000 protestors at the MoW don't warrant a mention?

Summary:

It would seem that anti-communism is the only political force acknowledged by Mr. Burns. Fear of nuclear war is downplayed, as is its ability to organize political movements. The size and civility of the early Civil Rights movement is also ignored in favor of shots of violence at sit-ins and hatred at school desegration.

----

On the CIA front, once again the Secret War in Laos is almost disappeared. One throw-away mention of the beginning of the largest aerial bombardment in history: "limited bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos". That mention was in a list of actions, called a "graduated response", taken by Johnson after the 1964 election. And those ten words are is all that is said about Laos. Nothing at all about the CIA.

Its not hard to find out about this campaign. Just type Operation Barrel Roll into Wikipedia:

Operation Barrel Roll was a covert U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division (later the Seventh Air Force) and U.S. Navy Task Force 77, interdiction and close air support campaign conducted in the Kingdom of Laos between 14 December 1964 and 29 March 1973 concurrent with the Vietnam War...

Barrel Roll was one of the most closely held secrets and one of the most unknown components of the American military commitment in Southeast Asia. Due to the ostensible neutrality of Laos, guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954 and 1962, both the U.S. and North Vietnam strove to maintain the secrecy of their operations and only slowly escalated military actions there. As much as both parties would have liked to have publicized their enemy's own alleged violation of the accords, both had more to gain by keeping their own roles quiet.

You know, Mr. Burns, this massive secret is as vital to a correct reading of the Vietnam War as the Bletchey Park codebreakers were to WW2. But, I'm sure its just an oversight that you don't elaborate on the significance of its beginning.

---

Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

I am still evaluating the coverage of this.

On the positive side, Mr. Burns acknowledges that the US/South Vietnamese attack on North Vietnamese islands was a provocation, and (most importantly) that there was no second attack (which triggered the Congressional resolution). However, after saying the incident was "one of the most important events in American history", he never manages to directly state that this infamous, blank-check, war-without-a-declaration resolution was based on a lie.

On a path not taken, it would have been really useful to know who ordered the South Vietnamese attack (and the US support for it). That is, who in the US chain of command decided to put US Navy ships in harm's way while widening the war? Was it LBJ? McNamara? MACV? Of course, Mr. Burns is not interested in the reasons why we put our ass in a sling, he's is only interested in the walloping inflicted on that ass.

----

Once past the watershed (Tonkin Gulf, 1964 election, US combat troops), the narrative becomes predominantly military.

Again, positively, Mr. Burns reports on how the war was escalated without the knowledge of the American public. For example, by not mentioning the switch from tit-for-tat bombing to sustained bombing campaigns.

I was gratified to see the "no press censorship" policy get a decent amount of coverage. It was that policy, from day one, which let the American public know there was an alternative narrative. Of course, the first thing that happened to those providing that narrative was that they were accused of being Communists. So, that part of the story was well-told.

I was conflicted about the Joe Galloway stories. The man either had a death wish or more balls than brains to hop choppers into the middle of two of the biggest battles in the early part of the war. His anecdotes are laugh out loud funny ("You may not shoot the little brown men inside the perimeter. They are mine.")

OTOH, the Galloway stories were your standard glorification of the plucky heroes and homage to the fallen. Despite the fact that Vietnamese got to tell their stories, the enemy was predominantly referred to as "the Communists". The Communists this, the Communists that. Only in the captions would people be identifed as "N. Vietnamese Army" or "Viet Cong". I felt like I was being propagandized that the motive of the Vietnamese was Communism, not independence.

That's it for this episode.