Burns, Episode 7 - It's all about airtime and personalization.

This episode dumps a lot of negative stuff all at once. While this episode finally has some useful facts, the spin is quite pronounced. When I see personal stories of undistinguished soldiers getting more airtime than the entire Phoenix Program, I feel like I am being played by professionals. Personal stories engage people and are remembered. Dry recitals of facts and statistics, images without stories, those things are quickly forgotten due to the lack of an emotional hook.

I will report on this in pro/con fashion, and give approximate airtimes to the various talking points. (Just FYI, it took me a while to get the airtimes; but I needed them to make a quantitative case that couldn't be accused of personal bias.)

Phoenix Program:
PRO: I have to retract my earlier statement about Lieutenant Okamoto. He is identified as part of the Phoenix program. He is shown as doing his job and being remorseful. We get 10+ minutes about his heroism in battle for which he received the DSC. Then, we get only 1 minute of his participation in Phoenix.

The PP is identified as out of control, with at least 50% innocents killed. Total number of killed is in the right ballpark (20k? vs 40k?). The fact it was run by the CIA with ARVN to carry it out is mentioned. Computerized lists are mentioned. Waterboarding is shown.

There is a two minute segment on Gen. Ewell, whose policies were almost as bad as the Phoenix Program. He is criticized by a high ranking army officer; but it is reported that no one was ever prosecuted for these actions.

CON: The entire report on the five year long Phoenix Program totals about 4 minutes - less time than is spent on the ordinary soldier, Michael Holmes. The fact that the PP lasted until 1972 is completely ignored.

Corruption in South Vietnam

There is a five minute section on corruption, refugees, epidemics, poverty.

PRO: We get some numbers on the massive corruption of SVN: with 10% of US aid or ~$2B/Yr gone into the black market. A good anecdote from reporter Galloway.

CON: The narrative tries to pretty things up by saying that Saigon was "filthy and free". I could say the same thing about Lagos, Nigeria. Was that really good enough for the American people in 1967?

Democratic Convention

PRO: Dem Convention is given a lot of airtime - almost 13 minutes. Lots of police brutality shown. The National Guard pointing guns at people is shown. "Police riot" report cited. Well known history, well known film clips. Nothing new.

CON: Other than one 15 second film clip of a statement by Renee Dubois, there is no commentary from protest leaders or documentary talking heads. No deeper analysis of Dem Party machine. No one to give a scholar's perspective, simply news clips from the moment. The only "protestor" commentary is by some excitable helicopter pilot with a Dali moustache, who was in VN when the convention happened. They couldn't find someone who had actually been among the demonstrators? The blackout on mentioning big name protestors continues. Just a faceless mob of kids.

Also, almost no air time given to the plight of anti-war Dems after the MLK/RFK assassinations. Its just on to the convention, where all we get for anti-war speeches is Abe Ribbentrop calling the CPD the Gestapo.

Personal stories

By my count, there are ~55 minutes of personal stories. (See the breakout at the end.) Not only are these the majority of the program; they drive the emotional narrative. Of these, 39 minutes are stories of good soldiers and their heroics - including 4 minutes of NVA women truck drivers. That leaves about 15 minutes for opponents of the war.

PRO: We have General McPeek, eventual AF Chief of staff, saying we fought on the wrong side, that S. Vietnam was corrupt, that the NVA were really good. We hear him say that bombing the Trail was honest work, as compared to bombing computerized target coordinates. His story is interleaved with a four minute, sympathetic story about women truckers on the HCMT.

We have the singular story of Karl Marlantes - Yale/Rhodes Scholar quitting Oxford to fight in the Marines. We have four more minutes of Dr. Kushner's ordeal in the prison camp. All uplifiting stuff, but see my closing section on Paul Carrell.

CON: We got the short life of an innocent boy from Missouri, who was a poor student - just one name on The Wall. I understand why they did it, and it is important. However, I question the airtime allotment. His story got more airtime than the Phoenix Program.

We get six minutes on a small town guy agonizing over whether or not to desert. He eventually stays so as not to embarrass himself and his parents. He feels like he went against his conscience and is a coward. Interesting, but, again, longer than the Phoenix piece.

Finally, we get almost six minutes about one of the talking head's brother who fled to Canada and died of drug problems 20 years later. So, the person they picked to represent expats is an agonizing druggie loser who never gets to tell his own story. He is implicitly unflatteringly compared to his West Pointer brother. This story also takes longer than the PP coverage. Thanks for the fair coverage, Ken.

We get five minutes on generic protesters' stories; but its from Mogie's sister and a black women - neither of them big names. Neither of them deep thinkers. Neither of them deeply radicalized.

Nixon's war

As soon as Nixon shows up, the tone changes. Right up front, they truthfully point out that he committed treason, which LBJ refused to do anything about. They have him on tape lying to LBJ. They have him ordering a massive escalation of the bombing of Laos, with B-52s. I will stay tuned on this, but I suspect they are going to dump a lot of bad shit on Tricky Dick to let others dodge responsibility.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS

I get the impression that the bad stuff is rushed on and off stage, as if to say "there, we told you about it", while the propaganda pieces go on for some time. I have talked about this in detail in my comments about airtime.

IN CLOSING:

All in all, I'm getting a distinct Paul Carell vibe about this documentary.

Paul Carell (born Paul Karl Schmidt) was an Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) in Nazi Germany. He worked as the chief press spokesman for Joachim von Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry, where he formulated propaganda for the foreign press. In this capacity during World War II, he maintained close ties with the Wehrmacht. After the war, he became a successful author, mostly of revisionist books that romanticized and whitewashed the Wehrmacht.

After World War II, Schmidt became a writer. Aided by the network of 'old comrades' working in the publishing industry, he was able to secure assignments...From 1965 to 1971 the Office of the State Prosecutor of Verden in Germany investigated him for murder. But the investigation, which should have clarified his role in the genocide of Hungarian Jews, ended without an indictment. Schmidt never had to face a trial for his activities during the war.

In his books, Carell portrays the Wehrmacht as heroes fighting for a lost cause. Carell presents the post-war revisionist messages first popularized by leading Wehrmacht ex-generals:

• The German soldier fought a clean war imposed on him by an evil dictator (there is no mention of the war of aggression and annihilation, which the war in the East really was)
• The Waffen-SS appear as soldiers just like all the rest
• In the end, the overwhelming material and human resources of the enemy defeat the Germans

Carell's works emphasize the German army's professionalism, sacrifice and positive encounters with civilians. His books also suggest that the Wehrmacht freed the Russians from their Communists tyrants and restored their religious community.

The army thus operated in a world distinct from the political sphere, and the culprits for any calamities that befell the Russian people rule this political sphere, namely the Nazi and the Communist parties. The thrust of this argument thus confirmed the high moral position of the German officer, perpetuating the myth of the 'clean Wehrmacht'. Carell's themes of anti-Communism also appealed to the U.S. public and garnered Carell repeat reprints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Carell

Wikipedia's take on Carell is quite apropos:

revisionist books that romanticized and whitewashed the Wehrmacht.

But this series goes Carrell one further. Just as with Carrell, the politicians get the blame, but the real instigators - the Dulles Brothers, the CIA, the MIC - barely get mentioned.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

SEGMENT Start End AIRTIME

ISSUES

PHOENIX 45:59- 50:05 4:06

Chicago Conv. 25:45- 38:30 12:45
(moustache guy) 36:40- 38:10 (1:30)

Corruption 1:07:08- 1:11:39 4:31

Gen. Ewell 1:13:00- 1:15:58 2:58

Nixon Treason 52:46- 55:44 2:58
Nixon secret bomb 1:40:00 1:41:32 1:32

Matt H. 2nd tour 1:26:22- 1:27:00 0.38
------
GRAND TOTAL 29:28
------------
PERSONAL STORIES


HEROES/VICTIMS

Karl Marlantes 57:12- 1:00:26 3:14
1:41:32- 1:46:27 4:55
------
8:09

Okamoto 11:30- 21:00 (DSC) 10:30
46:30- 47:45 (Phoenix) 1:15
------
11:45

Merrill McPeek 1:28:31- 1:32:21 3:50
1:34:22- 1:35:00 0:38
1:36:45- 1:38:00 1:15
------
5:43

Dr. Kushner 1:03:08- 1:07:08 4:00

Mike Holmes 39:23- 44:44 5:21
---------
GRAND TOTAL 34:58

NVA

NVA truckers 1:32:22 1:34:17 1:55
1:35:00- 1:36:45 1:45
------
3:40
DOUBTERS/DESERTERS
Tim O Brien 2- 5:10 3:10
1:00:26- 1:03:06 2:30
------
5:40

Bob Harrison 1:20:58- 1:26:24 5:26
1:28:15- 1:28:30 0:15
------
5:41

PROTESTORS

Carol Crocker+ 1:16:05- 1:20:58 4:53

GRAND TOTAL (All personal) ~55:00

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Comments

Damn you hit on Paul Carell and the comparison to Nazi apologia!!!!

Just some other lesser insights from Nazi apologia that could apply to Burns.

When I watched the film Stalingrad by Vilsmaier I thought what a piece of Nazi apologia and propaganda. The film shows good ole German boys in the Wehrmacht just nicely invading Italy and then the Soviet Union. What a fun and great group of guys. We see their personal travails as the war in the Soviet Union goes south. Poor boys just caught up in the madness of war.

What is not shown in the movie is that the invasion of the Soviet Union was by an nation and army explicitly dedicated to genocide of Jews and the Slavic peoples. Gone is any honest depiction of their willing racist brutality toward Russians and the "Asiatic" people part of the Soviet Union.

Burns like Vilsmaier shows the life of war from the perspective of the soldier grunt and humanizes them without showing what the war was about. It is noteworthy that Burns refused to use the world "murder" when referring to the My Lai massacre when requested by McPeek. To this day, very few think of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union as deliberately genocidal. When Daniel Goldhagen came out with his book there was such push back because the narrative was some leaders in a once-in-a-life-time-event did all the bad things.

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arendt's picture

@MrWebster

Hitler Moves East, Scorched Earth.

To a testostone addled, war movie junkie his stuff was really cool. It was only later I found out he was a propaganda flak who worked for Ribbentrop.

I don't why it took me until Episode 7 to remember the guy.

To be effective in a hostile environment, propaganda has to be subtle. Burns is subtle. A s smooth as Carell. Our brave boys. Our nice boys. They didn't mean it.

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@arendt Don't know how old you are, but even for me whose parents came out of WWII Europe and now an old dude, it is hard to hack your way through the weeds of propaganda.

Here is an interesting video that looks at how views of history can be distorted at least in the case of the Nazi/Soviet conflict and leaks into modern historical consciousness Who owns the narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I98P1AxQRUM
Why Germany Lost: The Three Alibis (WW2HRT 27-06)

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arendt's picture

@MrWebster

I have carried the truth with me for fifty years; it is seriously discouraging to watch so many people buy into the twisted narrative about what happened that this series is selling.

But, it is the logical consequence of destroying public education and making life about trivial, attention-span killing crap like Facebook and Twitter. When the vast majority of the audience is young and practically historically illiterate, TPTB can selectively edit history to create the "Good, but Blundering, Americans" narrative.

Have I mentioned how screwed this country is? All that is keeping us afloat is the threats and subversions that our CIA/MIC constantly run all over the planet in order to keep our currency from tanking (because we don't have an industrial base anymore). And what does this documentary do? It makes people feel sorry for our poor, poor MIC.

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arendt's picture

@MrWebster
I had googled the Vilsmaier movie, but decided not to watch it. The synopsys made Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" sound like a day at summer camp.

So, I never twigged to the fact it was propaganda whitewash. Thanks for the heads up.

Were you aware of Paul Carell already? AFAIK, only ex-wargamers and WWW2 buffs are aware of the guy.

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Azazello's picture

@arendt
as Stalingrad movies go. I've seen a bunch of 'em.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Bollox Ref's picture

@MrWebster

following orders' aspect doesn't get to the heart of the matter surrounding why they were in the Soviet Union in the first place.

Still, Stalingrad is a brutal film to watch. Makes Downfall look like a walk amongst the daisies.

I wouldn't wish that historic experience on anybody.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

arendt's picture

@Bollox Ref

was running there?

Both sides had security troops (Gestapo, ?NVD?) behind the lines to shoot anyone who tried to run away. The Germans froze and starved. The Russians, early on, had one rifle per two or three soldiers - they told the rifle-less to pick one up from a dead Russian.

Still, the Germans invaded. The Germans thought they would just grab the whole country, and they came damn close. But they (collectively) deserved everything they got. The Russians suffered many times more dead than the Germans.

One thing, though. The Germans did spend fifty years apologizing for and introspecting about what they did. America has never apologized for anything and is as clueless as it was in 1950.

My point is not to get too distracted by the German side of the Carell analogy. It's the American side we have to stay focused on.

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Bollox Ref's picture

@arendt

Added:

I remember years ago, when I was a teenager, reading my father's copy of "Enemy at the Gates" (Battle of Stalingrad), and not getting beyond the page that describes a female Soviet soldier losing all her limbs at some point in the fighting. Never finished the book.

War is definitely not pretty. Made worse by false premises, lies and societal amnesia.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Azazello's picture

@Bollox Ref
although it did draw on well-known historical events for inspiration.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Bollox Ref's picture

@Azazello

At the time I read it, it was traumatic reading.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

mimi's picture

@arendt
I can't remember one of my male family members (uncles, my father's brothers), who were soldiers in the Wehrmacht at that time, who didn't think that Hitler was a crazy lunatic when he ordered the invasion into Russia in 1941. It was the turning point for many to view Hitler as what he was. NOne of them volunteered to be in the Wehrmacht. One uncle got through without wounds, one (my father) lost arm and lost functioning lungs through US bombardment in Romania, the youngest was killed). The only uncle I had, who was a Nazi, was stationed in Norway, later came into French pow camp, and was then de-nazified by the Americans after the war (which in hindsight was a joke of an attempt - you can't denazify a Nazi's mind) My father went twice into Russian pow camp, before returning in 1947.

Many Germans may have been bamboozled by Hitler's rhetoric and propaganda, but I think for most the first cracks in their views about Hitler was with the beginning of the invasion into Russia. Just saying out of my memories.

My father dictated a recapture of his ordeal directly after he returned from POW camp in Russia in 1948 or 1949 to his secretary. He was so into it that he missed to mention some dates and facts which I would have needed to comprehend it in full and research it today.

One aunt (sister of my mother) had a one and a half year long march as a refugee from today's poland to Germany through several camps in several of today's Eastern European countries. My cousin gave me a copy, but I haven't read it yet. It's in a box in Germany.

One uncle (father's brother) worked somehow with the Americans in Landshut and was responsible that my mother and his wife and altogether 7 children and two friends were saved by bringing them into the American sector.

All in all, I think that is why - Germans in general - might have so far respected Merkel for her insistance on opening up the borders and helping today's refugees. I judge those, who blame Merkel for her refugee policies as frigging reborn Nazi shitheads. (sorry).

And the one Nazi uncle I had, he remained one. Once fixated in their opinions, always fixated. There were no discussions in my family about the holocaust, just about my father's journey he went through when invading Russia til he came back,. And he always started to cry at the point when soldiers were ordered to dig his grave, as they didn't expect he would survive the blood poisoning he had due to his lost arm, which wasn't amputated fast enough due to lack of anesthesias) That was then the end of "the war talks" in my direct family. My mother didn't want us children to ask more, because she couldn't stand seeing my father cry.

I learned about the holocaust as a child through school, documentaries in German TV in the late 1950ies with source film footage of the KZ camps - not at all comparable to some documentaries I saw fifty years later on the US History channel) and books from the library. There are photos of my father a year after his return from Russia, where he is deeply lost into a book, from which he learned about the holocaust in the concentration camps. I never could forget about that. Going through the whole mess and not having known what happened behind the gates of the KZ. Fucking terrible.

Well, just saying. I always wanted to read all the books I gathered, when I would be retired. Now I am retired and for some stupid reasons I sit in Hawaii and live off bananas and avocados without any book. I am bored. That's why I talk here. Sorry for this comment. All I know is that life is more complicated then the history that is written about it. I wished I had your education and systematic exposure to the books and documentaries you all have watched. Hopefully one day... I will catch up ... I like to study history.

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arendt's picture

@mimi

You have given the kind of witnessing that is very rare these days, with almost all WW2 vets deceased. That your father survived at all is more astonishing than some of the stories in Burns's documentary - they had medicine, med-evac, and field hospitals.

I was struck by one fact that is constant throughout history:

And the one Nazi uncle I had, he remained one. Once fixated in their opinions, always fixated.

The US still suffers from the racism and paranoid anti-communism found in the Vietnam Era. The John Birchers never surrendered. Instead, they took over the GOP and run the country now. They indoctrinate new generations into their mad hatreds.

With the end of the draft, and the lowering of standards (to admit gang members and non-citizens) today's Army increasingly resembles the French Foreign Legion. Unlike your father's Germans or Vietnam's grunts, they are there voluntarily. They are free to kill anything that moves because the media is corporate media and will report only what it is told to report.

Thanks again for your contribution.

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mimi's picture

@arendt
that people can be manipulated into a fixation, but then it seems to be very hard to re-manipulate them back into the mind stage they had before they were manipulated.

The de-programming issue, the un-fixing methods, that is what I want to learn about.

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@mimi
to "program" human beings than it is to "de-program" them.

Back in the 1950s, L.Ron Hubbard developed a highly effective system of mind-control called "Scientology" that was extremely difficult to break out of, once its "commands" and thought-patterns had been hypnotically implanted. It's a fascinating phenomenon to study, from the perspective of ex-Scientologists who were once thoroughly indoctrinated.

http://www.forum.exscn.net/
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/A%20Piece%20of%20Blue%20Sky.pdf

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native

mimi's picture

@arendt
nice that you say that, but imo one can't apologize for the holocaust.

To me it sounds fake or helpless and is therefore not convincing, a little bit it feels to me like the one verse of a childrens poem one had to say in front of the Christmas tree, before the presents were opened. It said

Lieber, guter Weihnachtsmann,
guck mich nicht so böse an.
Stecke deine Rute ein,
will auch immer artig sein!

freely translated :

Dear good world citizens
don't look at us so angrily
put away your criticism
we will behave more nicely now.

ok, I am not drunk, just getting senile. But really, how could you really in earnest try to think an apology for the holocaust would work?

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arendt's picture

@mimi

nice that you say that, but imo one can't apologize for the holocaust.

I agree with you.

However, the Germans have banned Nazi paraphenalia and literature - most of what is there, illegally, is shipped in from the US or accessed from US websites.

Some individual Germans have made important political gestures. Gestures, when backed up by policy enforcement, can change behavior.

So, I think that the best you can say is that the Germans really did change their behavior, changed their thought patterns. Yes, a lot of Nazis got away with it. But, for fifty years, they managed to keep the lid on Hitlerism. That's two entire generations. If Germany goes fascist again, you can't blame the White Generation.

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bless your heart.

When you point out the similarities between the Vietnam series by Burns and the propaganda of Paul Carell (Paul Karl Schmidt) you mention this:

But this series goes Carrell one further. Just as with Carrell, the politicians get the blame, but the real instigators - the Dulles Brothers, the CIA, the MIC - barely get mentioned.

The Dulles Brothers, the CIA, the MIC were also what brought about German rearmament and the Nazi regime before WWII as well as the rat lines used to protect Nazi butchers after the war.

And as you say about Vietnam, after WWII Nazi politicians were blamed and a handful were brought to justice. But the legal, financial, and industrial perpetrators, who were in fact the Dulles Brothers, the CIA, the MIC, were not even mentioned and went scott free after committing the crime of arming Hitler for the duration of WWII and protecting war criminals after the war.

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@Linda Wood @Linda Wood

everything connected with the Dulles brothers as, and with, the CIA, which didn't exist before or during WWII as such. But the secret intelligence operation of arming psychopathic killers, money laundering their support, and controlling the message in the media was indeed the work of these fascist lawyers and their clients who were the very industrial and banking leaders who armed Hitler before and during the war and continued to run our foreign policy after the War at the hands of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Director of the CIA Allen Dulles.

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arendt's picture

@Linda Wood @Linda Wood

The Dulles Brothers were barely mentioned in the first episode. But it was the Dulles Brothers and their hysterical anti-communism that caused the CIA to start overthrowing governments in 1953 - Iran (where we put in the Shah, and had Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf's FATHER train his infamous secret police - the Deep State is so incestuous), Nicaragua (where we put in the corrupt Somoza who lasted until the Sandinistas threw him out in 1980), and then they put Diem into Vietnam.

The CIA had a seriously bad reputation by the late 1960s. They were up to their tricks in Jamaica, supporting a politician named Seaga - the locals called him CIAga. They were up to their eyeballs in the bloody coup/massacre in Indonesia - well within the timeframe and geographic scope of this series - but not a word.

The series refuses to take a hard look at the CIA, how it got us involved in these places, how it pushed for neocolonialism and dictatorial rule using the excuse of anti-communism, how it was the personal tool of presidents (giving them a power trip, but also compromising them and controlling them), how it circumvented government oversight, how it ran drugs and laundered money (as you say).

The series goes out of its way to avoid mentioning the CIA.

Edward Lansdale is pictured next to Diem - but he is never named in the episode. His previous work stamping out guerillas in the Philippines would have been relevant. Good luck telling that story.

About the Phoenix Program, Burns says no more than that the CIA ran it. Leaves the viewer to blame the ARVN for the problem.

They really ought to call this series "CIA? what CIA?"

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Wink's picture

@Linda Wood
have now infiltrated the highest levels of our political system, government. We are now lead by Nazis, and wonder why our "government" is non responsive to the governed, have nothing but contempt for the governed.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

mimi's picture

I haven't seen it, but I remember that I took a small class for video editing for ordinary people once and one lady, who worked in that field said that there is a "Burns-school" type of editing style.

Close-up, teary, emotionally inciting, short and hard cuts etc.

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phase in 1983 or so through that Stanley Karnow documentary on PBS. I want to say that PBS used to have ads on the old network TV, pre cable, and I saw and ad and realized I'd grown up as a kid with that war on television in black and white. My parent's of course believed in it. I'd barely scraped through high school due to some willfulness to put it nicely, and they barely touched it in school then anyway, but had no idea which side we fought against? The north or south? So I watched that and then read a lot after that. But I didn't hit them all back then, now that I've read a few more you've hit the nail on the head for how I imagine TV handles that war. And there's no way someone like Burns challenges the CIA. That's how they stay famous and relevant now. I just not too long ago read Michael Herr's "Dispatches," I'd missed that one. Great read. Great writer of something so dark.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

arendt's picture

@lizzyh7

There is some legitimacy to that. Any closer and it is not settled history; it is current events. The players are still alive, still spinning the story.

We won't have the full story until Henry K. dies and all the archives are opened...FAT CHANCE of that ever happening. Kennedy's f-ing skull went missing; and they have had 50 years to run the shredders.

It's getting harder for young folks who want to learn anything other than the party line to find it. You can look on the Internet, but separating truth from whackjob websites is very difficult.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

That's because that's EXACTLY what was happening.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

arendt's picture

@Amanda Matthews

I wanted to be able to say things like:

There were 55 mins. of personal stories.
40 minutes by soldiers/heroes
15 minutes by dissenters.
Of those 15 minutes,
6 for a guy who thought about deserting and didn't.
6 about a guy who did, but died of drugs - told by his brother, a West Pointer hero.
5 by two minor activists whose activism was "legitimized" by military in the family.

Bottom line: not one minute of informed, scholarly rebuttal to the good soldiers, bad war narrative.

I knew I was being played. The numbers confirm it. I won't even go into the list of quotes I noted - disparaging the protestors, excusing bad conduct, praising the military, praising the naive kids who would go where they were told because that's how they'd been raised.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@arendt @arendt
are eating this nonsense up, thinking they are 'really learning' something.

What REALLY p*sses me off is that the station I watch. NETV, states on its website that these are their VALUES

Our highest value is service to others.
We invite, honor and respond to all ideas.
We provide high-quality content and services.
We address the needs of our diverse communities.
We strive for the highest degree of editorial integrity and independence.
We responsibly use and manage public and private resources.

We foster an inclusive environment that attracts, develops and retains a diverse, motivated and creative staff.
We pursue excellence in the application of techniques, procedures and technologies.

http://netnebraska.org/basic-page/about-net/about-net

I think after this NETV might want to rethink those 2 highlighted VALUES. And your reporting and input has been fantastic. You provided so much detail that I (for one) didn't know t am truly grateful for all your hard work. Too bad that everyone exposed to this intentionally fraudulent 'documentary' doesn't know how dishonest it is. And this is supposed to be an 'educational' channel, one supported by donations. Obviously some of those donations buy more than just programming. Or maybe I have that wrong and 'programming' is exactly what David Koch is paying for.

EDIT: morre/more

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Was all the KGB and Chinese intelligence behind the North Vietnamese. The Cold War was raging and Vietnam was a victim and the Soviets and the Chinese were probably worse players than the US, by far.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

arendt's picture

We all know that the South Vietnam government and army leaked like a sieve, that the locals hired by the US were shot through with spies. From the tactical to the strategic level our plans and movements were known almost instantaneously - because the populace hated us as foriegners.

Other than providing long range warning of US airstrikes or strategic plans (e.g., like invading Cambodia) I do not see Russian/Chinese intelligence as the dominant factor. That's why I ask you for some specific situation.

As I read somewhere, N. Vietnam was a peasant society. The US couldn't bomb it into submission because all its military supplies were supplied by the Russians and Chinese, whose ships we dared not attack. IOW, we couldn't attack N. Vietnam strategically; only tactically. With that in mind, could you give me some concrete example of how Russian/Chinese intelligence helped N. Vietnam to win in ways the Vietnamese could not do for themselves via their massive in-country intelligence?

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@arendt

Of showing the war in terms of it's effect on society, it's causes and it's military strategy (or lack thereof) on both sides and what soldiers on both sides experienced. A lot of the cold war was about subterfuge by intelligence services on both the dictatorial, outwardly imperialistic, "communist" side and the not really as bad side representing democracy in a very hard to avoid, flawed way. If Ken Burns talked more about the CIA he would have to put it in context with the KGB. Maybe that's asking too much.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

arendt's picture

@Timmethy2.0

If Ken Burns talked more about the CIA he would have to put it in context with the KGB. Maybe that's asking too much.

Yeah, he would have to. But he never would have gotten corporate funding if he did that.

The main point behind my entire 8 essays (so far) is how this series whitewashes the CIA and generally follows the pattern of rehabilitating the German Army after WW2.

Try reading the earlier essays, especially #7 about Paul Carell, and the general comment to #8.

I asked for examples from you, not Mr. Burns, about how Russian/Chinese intel impacted the war. You gave no answer. Instead you gave this semicoherent ramble that tries to say we weren't as bad as they were:

A lot of the cold war was about subterfuge by intelligence services on both the dictatorial, outwardly imperialistic, "communist" side and the not really as bad side representing democracy in a very hard to avoid, flawed way.

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earthling1's picture

for Selective Service as ordered, I never got over the inequity of being forced to serve while not being able to vote, or buy anything on credit, or enter into a contract of any kind. By law, I was a minor, a child, unable to make decisions for myself.
I know that was never addressed in the program.
But, for the first time in my life I was lucky NOT to win the lottery.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

mimi's picture

the truthdig coverage pales against yours.
Vietnam Myopia, 50 Years Later .

Just saying, kudos to the work you put into this.

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arendt's picture

@mimi

My purpose is point-by-point analysis. All these other guys want to wrap it up in one single essay. Two different animals.

Although I would love to hear of other people doing point-by-point.

Thanks for the praise. I think I only look good because I seem to be the only game in town.

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