General comment:

This series should really should be named "Grunts of Vietnam" because everything else is background, except a little for air support and helicopters. That explains how they will be able to cover the last six years of the war in only two episodes. Those years aren't about grunts. Operation Linebacker (1972) didn't happen to grunts. Watergate didn't affect grunts.

Of course, the tight focus on personal stories of ordinary soldiers is exactly the Paul Carell playbook that I spoke of in Episode 7. And that playbook explains the almost complete disappearence of the CIA.

1. This episode

Tet was like the chain reaction phase of an A-Bomb - it's all over in 30 nanoseconds; but it takes another whole second for the enormous energy released to begin to become manifest macroscopically. Tet vaporized the framework of honest speech, mutual trust, and voluntary cooperation which had been the unspoken organizing principle of both the US military and the US electorate. Once that framework was gone, the intrinisic violence and anarchy of the US came boiling to the surface: insubordination, fragging, weathermen, Black Panthers, Kent/Jackson State.

This year of the war was probably its worst. Troop levels were at their highest while morale was at its lowest. The war is shown, as it was then perceived, as senseless violence and un-American war crimes: tunnel fighting, another whole minute about the Phoenix Program (at least this one contains first person testimony from a torture victim), Hamburger Hill, the incontrovertable war crime at My Lai.

2. Editorial Bias

Given this much historical fact to cover in one chronological episode, only a hard core ideologue could say that the coverage was completely biased. I won't say that. The phrase "limited hangout" does come to mind though.

However, as other commentators have said, the series seems to imply that only those who had served in Vietnam and then became protestors had real moral standing. Only wounded soldiers or traumatized nurses have the right to call bullshit.

POW families are given a lot of very sympathetic airtime. There is one place where the narrator says, without any rebuttal, "the antiwar movement...seemed more sympathetic to NV civilians who had been bombed than they had been to US airmen who had been shot down doing that bombing". As if that was a no-brainer, instead of the wave of a bloody shirt. That's a distinct editorial comment. The pilots chose to fly. They chose to bomb civilians. They got shot down, and we should honor them as heroes? Because they were tortured? See the Phoenix Program. OTOH, Stockdale's wife comes across as a 24-carat bitch. So letting her speak for the POWs is also an editorial comment, albeit one that is not stated directly by the narrator.

I also object to the way they handled the overt commentary about 60s music. The only person who speaks to it directly is General McPeek, who comes off as very cool and very antiwar. The background music for his remarks is the lightweight "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the relatively tame Beatles. When you get to the real music, Woodstock, there is no commentary. Just a cross-cutting montage of doped up hippies dancing and singing versus soldiers fighting and dying. Real subtle message there, Ken. Fuck you.

At this point in time, the theme I have been pushing, that the CIA manufactured every step of US involvement, in VN fades into the background of the chaos unleashed by Tet, and by its most radioactive byproduct, Richard Nixon. (I will discuss the CIA at the very end.)

3. Nixon

Nixon was elected because he perfectly channeled the bitterness of the Silent Majority, whose 60+% majority is cited several times in this episode. George Wallace gets a mention, and his 20% vote share is mentioned. However, its significance could be missed if one didn't know that the South normally voted Democratic back then. That is, Humphrey never had a chance, peace talk sabotage by Nixon not withstanding.

Nevertheless, Nixon was sui generis. He had the pulse of the Silent Majority even better than Wallace. He whipped them up while managing to sound respectable. He shared their anger at East Coast Liberals and hippie college punks, and he expressed it genuinely and effectively. His draft lottery scheme and the beginnings of a troop withdrawl temporarily stabilized the home front political situation by pitting the innate conservatism and patriotism of the older generation against the moral outrage of the younger generation.

However, Nixon, as Kissinger remarked, (paraphrase) "did not make the same old mistakes. He made his own mistakes." He was an odd character, unstable, secretive, private.

Kissinger found Nixon "a very odd man...a very unpleasant man...so nervous...an artificial man...[who] hated to meet new people...He really dislikes people."

- O. Stone and P. Kuznick, "The Untold History of the United States"

So, he and Kissinger dreamed up the Cambodia invasion, which blew the home front apart again and resulted in Kent and Jackson State, which took the home front to new levels of divisiveness. The episode ends with some reflections by ex-military protestors. See timings below for editorial emphasis.

4. Unreported CIA activity

Here are some things the CIA did in this episode's time frame:

Prince Norodom Sihanouk claimed in his 1973 book that the CIA engineered his ouster by Lon Nol in March 1970. While Sihanouk's allegations about the CIA have never been substantiated, and it may well be the case that the highest levels of the U.S. government were surprised by the coup, there is a developing academic consensus that U.S. military intelligence was aware of and actively encouraged the plot to depose Sihanouk.

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

...the agency pumped millions of dollars into the politics of Thaiiland in 1968 and 1969; the cash financed the apparent transformation of the uniformed military into a ruling party ready to stand for election...The election came off and the ruling junta won handily. But the rulers grew impatient with the trappings of democracy. They soon ened the experiment, suspending the constitution and disbanding the parliament.

The CIA's covert action had been the thinnest veneer. "There should be no change in Thai relations with the US.", Kissinger told Nixon after the coup. "The leadrs of the Revolutionary Council are in fact essentially the same ones we whom we have been dealing all along."

- Tim Weiner, "Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA"

We ran the war in Laos and Cambodia through drugs,", (Bo) Gritz continued. "From '65 to '75 there is one CIA guy in Laos, named Shackley, involved in the narcotics business. And you know he used for distribution? Santos Trfficante, old friend of the CIA and mob boss. Later, Richard Armitage, who stayed in Asia after the Vietnam war ended, was a prominent trafficker in Bangkock between 1975 and 1979...Armitage was also responsible for recovery of US prisoners of war.

- Daniel Hopsicker, "Barry and the Boys - The CIA, the Mob, and America's Secret History"

-----

TIMINGS (very long topics are in bold)

Topic Start time End Time

PERSONAL STORIES

Brave nurses 1:30 - 5:18
POWs, (Stockdale's wife) 10:00 - 13:20
Tunnel war 14:24-15:55
Vallely 27:30-30:37
Medics 46:48-49:33
TIm O'Brien 1:01:27- 1:05:00
Bao Nihn 1:05:01-1:08:12
Dr. Kushner 1:30:31-1:32:16
O'Brien/Ehrhart//Musgrave 1:45:25-1:47:47

PROTESTS

Protests 7:54-8:32
Music - General McPeek 8:33-9:58
Woodstock 30:37-32:30
Mobilization/Draft Lottery 49:35-51:13
Weathermen 51:14-53:49
Legit Protest 53:49-58:06
Silent majority 58:07- 1:01:26
Protests/Musgrave/Deserter 1:18:19- 1:30:30
Negotiations/bombs at home/Nixon 1:32:17-1:34
Kent/Jackson State 1:38:25-1:45:25

WAR

Phoenix program, done by ARVN - 13:21-14:23
Hill 937 and reaction: 15:56-19:29
New army in 1968 - 32:20-42:27
POWs 45:05-46:46
My Lai 1:08:12- 1:18:20

NIXON
Vietnamization 21:00-27:29
Invasion of Cambodia 1:35:00-1:38:00