<div dir="ltr"><b>Good article from Michael Lyon from SF Gray Panthers<br><br></b><div><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Lyon</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mlyon01@comcast.net">mlyon01@comcast.net</a>></span><br>Date: Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 5:35 AM<br>Subject: FROM MICHAEL LYON: Ken Burns on Vietnam "It was all just a tragic mistake" Yeah, right. 1<br>To: Michael Lyon <<a href="mailto:mlyon01@comcast.net">mlyon01@comcast.net</a>><br><br><br>
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="FONT-SIZE:14pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Arial';COLOR:#000000">
<blockquote style="MARGIN-RIGHT:0px" dir="ltr">
<div align="justify"><font style="FONT-SIZE:13.6pt"><i>Burns and Novick’s film
in its first episode provides conventional analysis about the war’s outbreak
and can be understood as a sophisticated exercise in empire denial. ... <font><i>A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently claims that the
Vietnam War was “started in good faith by decent
men.”</i></font></i></font></div>
<div align="justify"><font size="4"></font> </div>
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563reader-header" class="m_-4431630061681318563header" style="DISPLAY:block" align="justify"><font size="4">During an early stop last April at the University of Texas LBJ School
of Public Affairs to promote the film, America’s favorite documentarian was
asked if Vietnam was a ‘’just war?” <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/01/ken-burns-lynn-novick-do-vietnam-a-tale-of-two-critics/" target="_blank">“It’s
impossible to make a blanket judgment about the war,” intones Mr. Burns</a> –
the very paragon of avuncularity.</font></div>
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563header" style="DISPLAY:block" align="justify"><font size="4"></font> </div>
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563header" style="DISPLAY:block" align="justify"><a id="m_-4431630061681318563reader-domain" class="m_-4431630061681318563domain"><font size="4">huffingtonpost.com,</font></a> September 18, 2017
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563domain-border"></div>
<h1 id="m_-4431630061681318563reader-title"><font size="4"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/burns-vietnam-documentary-promotes-misleading-history_us_59bf4922e4b0390a1564df2b?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003" target="_blank">Ken
Burns's Vietnam Documentary Promotes Misleading History</a></font></h1>
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563reader-credits" class="m_-4431630061681318563credits"><font size="4"></font></div>
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563meta-data" class="m_-4431630061681318563meta-data">
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563reader-estimated-time"><font size="4">Jeremy
Kuzmarov</font></div></div></div><font size="4">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563container m_-4431630061681318563font-size5 m_-4431630061681318563content-width3" align="justify">
<hr>
</div></font>
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563moz-reader-content" class="m_-4431630061681318563line-height4" style="DISPLAY:block" align="justify">
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563readability-page-1" class="m_-4431630061681318563page"><article id="m_-4431630061681318563us_59bf4922e4b0390a1564df2b" class="m_-4431630061681318563entry m_-4431630061681318563js-entry m_-4431630061681318563component m_-4431630061681318563loaded m_-4431630061681318563entry--standard" type="article">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563entry__content m_-4431630061681318563js-entry-content">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563entry__body m_-4431630061681318563js-entry-body">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563entry__text m_-4431630061681318563js-entry-text m_-4431630061681318563bn-entry-text">
<p><a class="m_-4431630061681318563bn-clickable"><font size="4">Ken Burns</font></a><font size="4"> and
Lynn Novick’s documentary on the Vietnam War began airing on PBS last night
after much anticipation.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">The film follows previous Burns works in providing poignant
footage mixed with compelling interviews and a backdrop of good music,
starting in this case with Bob Dylan’s <i>A Hard Rain’s Gonna
Fall</i>.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Despite the counter-cultural veneer, however, and admirable
efforts to provide a Vietnamese perspective, Burns and Novick’s film in its
first episode provides conventional analysis about the war’s outbreak and can
be understood as a sophisticated exercise in empire denial.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">The film is misleading at the outset in quoting an American
soldier who recounts the pain of his homecoming, insinuating that veterans
were maltreated in the United States – a trope often used to blame antiwar
activists for creating this allegedly anti-veteran and divisive
climate.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently claims that the
Vietnam War was “started in good faith by decent men.”</font></p>
<p><font size="4">However, the film goes on to recount a history in which the
United States failed to allow for elections in the South after Vietnam had
been divided following the French defeat at Dienbienphu. Everybody knew North
Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh would win the election, and so the United States
set about building a client regime in the South which rigged a referendum and
then massacred thousands of suspected communists.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">These facts point to the United States violating the
sovereignty of Vietnam and betraying the American mission of supporting
democracy around the world.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">After World War I, the Wilson administration refused to look
at a petition by Ho Chi Minh advocating for Vietnam’s independence. The Truman
and Eisenhower administrations subsequently provided extensive support in the
1st Indochina War (1946-1954) to the French who had presided over an
oppressive colonial regime that exploited Vietnam’s economy and brutalized
nationalist opponents.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">This support was not made in good faith, but rather out of
self-interested geopolitical calculation and prejudice.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Burns and Novick mislead viewers further by showing footage of
North Vietnamese migrating to the South fleeing communist terror and
interviewing a woman whose family fled while leaving out the fact that the CIA
worked to sabotage North Vietnam’s economy, created a fake resistance movement
and coerced many Catholics and others to flee by spreading false rumors about
Vietminh atrocities and promising them 40 acres and a mule.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Burns and Novick depict the southern guerrilla movement as
being controlled by the Hanoi Politburo when the National Liberation Front
(NLF) was founded in direct response to the 10/59 law passed by South
Vietnamese premier Ngo Dinh Diem that allowed for the execution of regime
opponents after a military trial.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Burns and Novick also leave out some of the sinister aspects
of nation building in the late 1950s, such as the police training program led
by CIA advisers working under the cover of Michigan State University (MSU) who
imported surveillance equipment and built up Diem’s secret police.</font></p>
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter_placeholder">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter--politics m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter--inline m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter--wide m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter--one-line">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter__inner">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter__content">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter__content__inner">
<p class="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter__title">
</p><p class="m_-4431630061681318563inline-newsletter__description"><font size="4">The film suggests that
the U.S. was deceived by Diem who promoted undemocratic methods against
Americans’ advice. However, MSU police adviser Arthur Brandstatter wrote to
his colleague Ralph Turner that he supported Diem’s position regarding the
role of the Civil Guard in “neutralizing VC activity” and “never agreed with
the position that the Americans should try to help develop a democratic police
force under conditions of instability and insurgency.” (See Jeremy Kuzmarov,
<a href="http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/modernizing-repression" target="_blank">Modernizing
Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American
Century</a><i></i>. University of Massachusetts Press, 2012, chapter
7).</font></p>
<p></p><p></p></div></div></div></div></div>
<p><font size="4">These comments directly fly in the face of the film’s
presentation.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">According to Burns and Novick, the tragedy of the Vietnam War
was a product of the political climate of the Cold War. The film makes a point
of showing a map of the Soviet Union overrunning Eastern Europe and then
attempting to do the same with Iran, Turkey and the Mediterranean,
particularly in Greece.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">This history is flawed, however, because in Greece it was the
U.S. and UK that intervened militarily on behalf of royalist forces who had
collaborated with the Nazis, while the Soviet Union maintained its pledge
under the Yalta agreements not to back the left-wing rebels.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">The USSR also only consolidated pro-communist regimes in
Eastern Europe after the U.S. had implemented the Marshall Plan, interfered in
election in Italy and infiltrated secret teams, led by ex-Nazi collaborators,
to foment revolutions in Eastern Europe.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Burns and Novick quote Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and
other proponents of the domino theory who feared that if Indochina fell, all
of Southeast Asia would follow.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Left out, however, is how anticommunist fears were used to
advance a larger imperialistic policy designed to consolidate a chain of
military bases from Okinawa through the Ryukyu Islands, which were threatened
by the communist revolutions.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Political analyst Noam Chomsky has explained that Vietnam was
never going to invade any of its neighbors. The real fear of policy makers was
that successful independent socialist development in Vietnam would serve as a
model to other countries, including those with key strategic value such as
Indonesia and Japan.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">None of this is discussed in Burns and Novick’s documentary
which relies on clips from policy-makers and commentary from old Cold Warriors
mixed with a balance of Vietnamese voices who do not address the war’s
imperialist underpinnings on the American side.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">The implications are considerable in light of the fact that
the United States has been constantly at war since the Vietnam War ended and
continues to be deceptive about the motives underlying these wars.</font></p>
<p><font size="4">Jeremy Kuzmarov teaches at the University of Tulsa and is
author of <i>The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on
Drugs</i> (Massachusetts, 2009) and <i>Modernizing Repression: Police
Training and Nation Building in the American Century </i>(Massachusetts,
2012).</font></p></div></div>
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563js-right-rail m_-4431630061681318563right-rail m_-4431630061681318563bn-right-rail">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563advertisement m_-4431630061681318563right_rail_flex m_-4431630061681318563treated">
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563ad_right_rail_flex" class="m_-4431630061681318563ad_wrapper_top">
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563adsDiv1" class="m_-4431630061681318563adtech-adspot m_-4431630061681318563ad-right_rail_flex">
<div id="m_-4431630061681318563atwAdFrame1EAN"> </div></div></div></div></div></div>
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563bn-nav-sticky m_-4431630061681318563js-nav-sticky m_-4431630061681318563nav-sticky m_-4431630061681318563nav-sticky--b-page m_-4431630061681318563hide">
<div class="m_-4431630061681318563nav-sticky__bar">
<p class="m_-4431630061681318563nav-sticky__item m_-4431630061681318563nav-sticky__title"><font size="4"></font> </p></div></div></article></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><h1 style="text-align:left"><font size="1"><span style="font-weight:normal">"The
trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've
seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as
speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.”</span>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6134.Arundhati_Roy" target="_blank">Arundhati Roy</a></font>
</h1><div>
</div>
</div></div>
</div></div>