[CRNMC] Fwd: FROM MICHAEL LYON: Ken Burns on Vietnam "It was all just a tragic mistake" Yeah, right. 1

[Beth Brenneman]

*Good article from Michael Lyon from SF Gray Panthers*
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Lyon <mlyon01 at comcast.net>
Date: Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 5:35 AM
Subject: FROM MICHAEL LYON: Ken Burns on Vietnam "It was all just a tragic
mistake" Yeah, right. 1
To: Michael Lyon <mlyon01 at comcast.net>


*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. ... A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently
claims that the Vietnam War was “started in good faith by decent men.”*

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?” “It’s impossible to make a blanket
judgment about the war,” intones Mr. Burns
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/01/ken-burns-lynn-novick-do-vietnam-a-tale-of-two-critics/>
– the very paragon of avuncularity.

huffingtonpost.com, September 18, 2017
Ken Burns's Vietnam Documentary Promotes Misleading History
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/burns-vietnam-documentary-promotes-misleading-history_us_59bf4922e4b0390a1564df2b?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003>
Jeremy Kuzmarov
------------------------------

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary on the Vietnam War began airing on
PBS last night after much anticipation.

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 *A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall*.

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.

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.

A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently claims that the Vietnam War was
“started in good faith by decent men.”

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.

These facts point to the United States violating the sovereignty of Vietnam
and betraying the American mission of supporting democracy around the world.

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.

This support was not made in good faith, but rather out of self-interested
geopolitical calculation and prejudice.

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.

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.

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.

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, Modernizing Repression: Police
Training and Nation Building in the American Century
<http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/modernizing-repression>. University of
Massachusetts Press, 2012, chapter 7).

These comments directly fly in the face of the film’s presentation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jeremy Kuzmarov teaches at the University of Tulsa and is author of *The
Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs*
(Massachusetts, 2009) and *Modernizing Repression: Police Training and
Nation Building in the American Century *(Massachusetts, 2012).







-- 
"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.” Arundhati
Roy <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6134.Arundhati_Roy>
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