51 Replies to “I Amuse Myself”

  2. Democrat donor, apologist and bagman Ken Burns, also never mentioned the democrat states in the Civil War series or the democrat Plantation owners. He’s your prototypical leftist who spins a narration of fantasy sprinkled with enough human introspective to support his tripe. He’s your college professor blame the cops for shooting criminals kind of guy. He believes in free speech as long as it’s his kind of free speech and thinks the 1st amendment is misunderstood. If you want a real look at the man, you have to watch one or two of his college lectures. Activist would be a good summation.

  4. My question is this:
    How many of those interviewed voted for Trump.
    My guess: ZERO
    This is very upsetting for me as this was the one chance in my lifetime to have a solid, balanced thorough review of Vietnam and it is nothing of the sort.
    The bias just three episodes in is unbelievable.

  5. My question is this:
    How many of those interviewed voted for Trump.
    My guess: ZERO
    This is very upsetting for me as this was the one chance in my lifetime to have a solid, balanced thorough review of Vietnam and it is nothing of the sort.
    The bias just three episodes in is unbelievable.

  6. You see… The Republican President Richard Nixon, The Republican… he touched it last, so it’s his.
    possible sarc/

  7. A specific point illustrates what I mean:
    Even prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident it was clear that NV was sending troops south – a clear violation of the treaty of ’54. The US and SV were clearly within their rights to attack NV with the full force of arms. AND the leadership of the GOP and more importantly the US military wanted to do that – to win the battle decisively rather than the untenable containment strategy.
    LBJ and his advisors – leftovers of the Kennedy admin were too afraid of their base to act accodringly. It was political cowardice that made the war the quagmire that it was.
    None of this is covered by the “documentary” save for oneline mentioning that some in the military recommended acting more forcefully in NV.

  8. Lyndon Johnson who, more than likely murdered his predecessor, hailed by the left for the Civil Rights Act (only to curry Black voters for the next 200 years…didn’t use the words “African Americans” to describe those voters,) vilified Barry Goldwater as a war monger, created the permanent US welfare system (and thus eternal deficits) through the Great Society; sent more than 50,000 young Americans to die in the mud of Vietnam so that he and his family could enrich themselves through Bell Helicopter and General Dynamics and also resulted in the deaths of probably millions of Vietnamese.
    Wait until Burns gets to Nixon. Can hardly wait

  9. I was wondering whether there is a bias or maybe I am getting the truth. Is it me but is the cruelty of some American actions shown up against the dedication and determination of the VC commies?

  10. C’mon Kate, and the rest of the commentators, why do you waste time watching liberal propaganda?
    To Canuckguy: compare cruelty? Surely you jest. The Viet Cong and their NV masters put captives in tiger cages. They think nothing of other tortures for the captives. In contrast, one of the qualities American GI demonstrate much admired by other countries is how human they are. When they win and enter a town, they don’t act like conquerors but liberators. One of the manifestations of that are the Second World War iconic photos showing GIs surrounded by children, giving out treats. The VC defeated that by booby trapping their own kids, and detonate at the most murderous moment, killing not only the GI but also the children surrounding him. Yeah, that shows dedication and determination, just as the actions of Lucifer do. And the Islamic cultists.
    I am not saying that with so many soldiers, there are not isolated cases of cruelty committed by those wearing the American uniform. What I do say is those cases are anomalies, performed in violation of the rules of engagement set out by higher command. (Re the court martial of Lt. Calley) What the VC did, and the Japanese in WWII, were government policy. Therein lies a huge difference.

  11. A good tutorial for the Vietnam conflict and the subsequent peace treaty is “An American Amnesia” by Bruce Herschensohn. It brings the whole era into perspective.

  12. Watching the ads for this series, one could get the impression that Burns is the first to make such a documentary series about the conflict. He isn’t. In 1983, PBS produced and aired the multi-week series Vietnam: A Television History, based on a book by Stanley Karnow.
    In that one, many of the actual politicians and generals on both sides who were involved were interviewed. That alone made the it worth watching. It also went further into the history of the region leading up to WW II, such as discussing who the emperor Bao Dai was, giving the situation there a greater context. Burns glossed it over, implying that it there was no history to speak of before the arrival of the French and the later emergence of Ho Chi Minh.
    That series was, apparently, flawed and it had its share of critics. Nearly 2 years later, a right-wing group produced and aired, again on PBS, a rebuttal to many of the points made.
    As for the current series, it’s all right but not outstanding.
    I used to be impressed by Burns’s documentaries. The Civil War, despite its apparent shortcomings, remains a masterpiece. However, after hearing that he expressed anti-Trump sympathies, I’ve come to question his objectivity.

  13. Vietnam was a war that should never have happened (You don’t fight ideology with armies – sound familiar?). Winston Churchill advised them to avoid a land war in Asia at all costs. Once established, that war was not allowed to be fought to victory by the White House that conducted far too much of what should have been left to the military. RoEs were suicidal. The conscripts that were sent there were either killed or did what they could to survive (typical nasty business in war) in spite of their Commanders in Chief right down to the keener’s out of West Point, more than a few of whom were fragged. Nixon almost brought it to “victory” but Congress fixed that. What would victory have looked like? – a corrupt South Vietnam forever dependent on US military and economic aid. Ken Burns may have his opinions but I prefer information mostly from friends who were there and survived.

  14. For all of you who remember the events of the Viet Nam war, here is a horrible pun. Proceed at your own risk.
    This vice premier of South VN emigrated to the U.S. before the fall of Saigon, and settled in Little Saigon in California (The city of Garden Grove.) But the unfriendly spotlight persisted there, so to get away from all that, he went to live in a small island in Florida.
    How small is the island? Well, you hurt of a one horse town, this is a one cow key.

  17. How timely. Just brought home a book from the library which I’d put a hold on and discovered it’s “based on” the series. Funny thing, even before reading the thread here I was disappointed, because it’s not what i had expected. I had assumed it was kind of a little “deeper” for history geeks. It has pictures….

  18. For me it was the other way around as I never read the book.
    The older series was well-received because it was the first attempt to comment on the war and do so with perspectives from both sides. It included first-hand accounts by American politicians including Henry Kissinger as well as Vietnamese leaders such as Le Duc Tho and General Giap.

  19. I’ve not yet seen any of the series … however … speaking of writing history from the twisted perspective of the leftist victors (I assume you were implying such) … let me guess … Doris Kearns Goodwin is heavily featured in the Vietnam series. Obama’s official “historian”, and member of LBJ’s staff.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/16/doris-kearns-goodwin-biographer-presidents-interview
    She is perhaps the most biased historian I have ever read. Who has said that LBJ would be remembered as a GREAT president … if not for the Vietnam war. I expect she will eventually claim that LBJ was the “victim” of Republican HAWKS in the Congress who agitated for carpet-bombing goo-ks. I am sure she will NEVER attribute the Vietnam War to JFK, nor will she credit Nixon for getting us out of a war we never prosecuted with typical American determination. She was stridently anti-war and pushed aside by LBJ (her words), but still ADORES LBJ.
    I always wondered why I had to listen to her prattle on about baseball … until I learned the depth of her political bias. Then it was quite understandable why leftist darling Ken Burns featured her bias prominently in Baseball

  20. I just checked IMDB about the series. I recall that, earlier in the week, there was an extremely negative comment but it’s not there any more.
    Was it removed by the reviewer or did the website take it down? Considering that there have been allegations that Amazon has been deleting negative comments about HRC’s latest doorstopper and IMDB is, I believe, run by Amazon, I wouldn’t be surprised i there’s been a bit of manipulation on the part of the website.

  21. I still have a copy of the speech I gave at a Vietnam War Moratorium event in our high school.
    I was the “conservative” student speaker. A fellow student was the “liberal” student speaker.
    I recommended that we fight to win. [Sounds like a certain current President, does it not?]
    The only question I had afterwards was how I would win. I answered: “Give the battle to the [US] generals and let them take care of business.”
    I had no more questions after that.
    The liberal side was peppered with questions.

  23. There was also the 1981? Canadian produced series by Michael Mclear called “Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War” Also quite excellent.

  24. That was good if i recall, however it was a bit to soon after the fact IMO. We know a lot more about what was going on in NV and elsewhere now. And that’s why this latest unbalanced travesty is such a missed opportunity.

  25. In 1987 this is what Barry Goldwater said he would have done had he won in ’64:
    “I would have gotten every B52 I could get my hands on, and flown them all over North Vietnam. They would have dropped leaflets that said, ‘We’ll be back in 3 days.’ They would also have said the next thing they dropped would not have been leaflets.
    If they didn’t quit the war, I would have made a damned swamp out of North Vietnam. I mean that: I would rather have killed 2 or 3 million North Vietnamese than the fifty thousand American boys we lost.”
    Every successful general in American history would agree with that.

  26. Heck, the ARVN put their own guys into tiger cages for minor infractions.
    But what I learned is that John Wayne, Ken Burns, Sylvester Stallone, and other entertainers have made big money from Viet-Nam, so they are the war profiteers, and as for me, well, the VA won’t see me. Probably better that way.

  27. John Wayne did only one movie about Nam. He was fighting the libs who wanted and did trash our soldiers and America.
    PS. As someone who went to Nam as a flight/rescue medic. (1971 to 72)
    Most ARVN troops were OK,some were fearless but many were poorly trained. Never saw a single one end up in a tiger cage.

  28. Haven’t seen any of it and most likely will avoid it if possible as I find Burns’ documentaries are surefire cures for insomnia.
    I am interested to know, though, just how many times over the first four episodes Burns has derailed the narrative flow by spending ten minutes on the plight of the Negro? Okay, the Civil War series, sure, why not. But with the baseball and WWII series you could almost set your watch to where each episode would come to a screeching halt to highlight the plight of the Colored.
    Didn’t Burns do a series on the US national parks? Must’ve been a bugger to work in how Blacks were oppressed…

  29. Funny, maybe my eyes/ears aren’t that keen anymore, but I’ve watched every episode so far, and I can’t say that it’s playing any favourites as far as Presidential culpability goes.
    What is shining through is that the decisions – whether to enter, escalate, or continue – were predicated on how the fart-suckers (advisors) thought it would play out politically at home, i.e. the next election. And the Generals, were only to happy to “fill the bill”.
    I had already read Stanley Karnow’s: Viet Nam – a History, and H.R McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty. Both were critical, but remarkably non-partisan. So far, I don’t see this series veering from that path.

  30. Very little emphasis on the umm… Black issue so far. But there should be some certainly as we get into the late sixties. Blacks were drafted into firing grunt positions far more than whites on a per capita basis. There are obvious reasons for that but it means that the agony of the war was far greater for black Americans than it was for white Americans.

  31. regarding war profiteering by the dems:
    halliburton, rumsfeld, iraq 2.0
    I intend to watch the whole series then pass judgement, but a preliminary assessment, there is not a whole lot of new insight. I recognize some of the interviewees ie Alvarez the 1st pilot shot down, a tad older and a tad wiser then in the previous pbs offering.
    it does confirm for me however, the entire complete disaster rests entirely and completely
    in the lap of Washington and the elites muddling thru and micromanaging and all the lies, lies, lies.
    the notion of goldawter carpet bombing the north, ummmm, did he factor in the likelihood of a
    HUGE increase in the involvement of USSR and China?

  32. See my post above as one point of bias.
    There has been scant discussion of what the GOP had to say about what was being done in Vietnam. And it so far has been portrayed that both kennedy and lbj had little choice. They acted like Mclelland did in the civil war and Burns had no problem pointing that out. Burns is shaping the narrative that the US could only have done what it did or less than that. The truth is the US could and should have been far more forceful – using all its power and attacking NV directly.there were many who said at the time that that was the right course of action. But Burns has said almost nil to that effect.
    Also he is trying to frame this as a civil war. But it was a far larger conflict than that and he gives little respect to that – It was first and foremost a proxy war – a hot spot in the cold war. And the US and its allies screwed it up much as they did in Korea.
    As you watch going forward ask yourself which of the people talking might have voted for trump. Three episodes in and So far I haven’t seen one.

  33. I thought MacLear’s series was rather biased. I got the impression that the entire conflict was all America’s fault and that the commies were poor innocents who strove for the benefit of the people.
    Then again, it was on the CBC during the final years of PET, a man who so despised the U. S. that he practically invited draft dodgers to come to Canada.

  34. “…And it so far has been portrayed that both kennedy and lbj had little choice….”
    I didn’t see that at all. It made it quite clear that Kennedy made decisions to “take a strong stand” in Vietnam only to shore up what he perceived as the public’s mounting doubt that he had “the right stuff” after the humiliations of Bay of Pigs and Khruschev bullying him at the UN.
    And the film has been quite candid about Johnson lying to the American people and bullying people around him.

  35. I’ve found Burns’s documentaries to be hit and miss.
    As I mentioned earlier, The Civil War was outstanding. I also liked his Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, and Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (though I don’t recall him mentioning anything about the contributions of Canadian Reginald Fessenden).
    The rest of the ones I watched were OK, but I wouldn’t consider myself deprived if I’d missed them.

  36. Yes but he could have been far more aggressive/ done more. That is not pointed out. He did the minimum possible just as he did on the bay of pigs and got similar results.

  37. As a ‘Nam history junkie, I’m pleased with the copious amounts of “new” footage from the conflict. I’m also a little surprised that Burns showed how JFK made some pretty rookie mistakes going forward with the US intervention – not the typical hero worship WRT anything JFK. I was really surprised to see the pic of draft-dodging Slick Willie…but that was of course offset by showing GWB, the guy who used connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid ‘Nam. Problem is, there’s no evidence of family interference to keep W outta ‘Nam. Also, there were several US Air National Guard units (flying the same aircraft) that did tours in ‘Nam. There is no evidence whatsoever that Bush knew his Texas ANG unit wasn’t going to ‘Nam. In fact, the unit coincidentally didn’t rotate to ‘Nam during W’s time in the unit. But narratives gotta narrative.

  38. “GWB, the guy who used connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid ‘Nam. Problem is, there’s no evidence of family interference to keep W outta ‘Nam. Also, there were several US Air National Guard units (flying the same aircraft) that did tours in ‘Nam. There is no evidence whatsoever that Bush knew his Texas ANG unit wasn’t going to ‘Nam. In fact, the unit coincidentally didn’t rotate to ‘Nam during W’s time in the unit.”
    I might add, that if your aim was to seek a safe and comfortable billet and avoid Vietnam, becoming a fighter pilot in the Air National Guard wouldn’t strike me as the way to do that; perhaps USANG supply officer might have been the better option?
    In any case, predictably all kinds of noise about George W, no noise at all about either Clinton or Obama, neither of whom saw fit to serve in a uniform anywhere, at any time.

  39. I remember watching boy’s in body bags on the evening news as a youngster. A very messy war this one. So I do appreciate the footage and the perspective no matter how biased. I’m glad the yanks can actually talk about this one finally. For a long time they could not or would not. Not there best effort for sure but the Dems where in charge. Not surprising what a cluster f**k it was.
    I’m paraphrasing but, in episode 2 I think it was, there is a voice transcript/telephone call recording where JFK says “if I don’t recommit I’ll never get elected a second time”
    Now at this point the US body count was about 47 or so… Just saying, some golden knight son of a rum runner that fella.
    No matter what you might say about Nixon, he ran on a platform of getting out “with dignity” and at least got out. The Dems in congress and jane fonda sort of made it easy for the north to just out wait him.

  40. Viet Nam vet here (69-70). I find it amazing that we are still arguing over that mess. I’ve put it out of my mind as a clueless period in my life. I don’t ever intend to revisit it in detail. As far as historians getting it right, it’s still too soon. My entire generation needs to die off and 50 years added before its history can be seriously considered. And yeah, this means I’m never going to watch Ken Burns’ version of it.

  41. I too remember Vietnam: A Television History. Seemed to be fair to me.
    Not giving Moe Howard – I mean Ken Burns’s special the time of day as know he’d be injecting his politcs throughout the series. F him, the Ford Foundation, the Park Founation, and all the other lefty vermin that financed it.

  42. The Vietnam war carried on for as long as it did, I have heard, because the poon tang and the blow were so good that nobody really wanted to go home.

  43. Had a conversation today essentially along the same lines.
    A co-worker asked if I had been watching this new series and I answered not if it was the ken burns produced doc. I explained that the newer the production on the topic of Vietnam, the greater the distance between LBJ and even Kennedy on where lies the blame for what went wrong and more effort on blaming Kissinger and Nixon. Revisionist b******t. Might as well call Oliver Stone a historian.

  45. The Mclear 10,000 Day War was biased no doubt. Typical for a Canadian production during the Trudeau era. The only thing I found good about it was some interesting combat footage, particularly the battle of Hue.
    The most telling scene of the Burns doc so far was LBJ sitting at a desk picking targets off a map for the next days bombing sorties.

  46. I’ve been following the series, but recommend for added context “A Viet Cong Memoir” by Truong Nhu Tang the former justice minister of the Viet Cong who ended up floating around in the South China Sea hoping to be picked up by an American aircraft carrier — an irony he himself points out.

  47. I am aware of that, I was being sardonically critical that the American atrocities(few as they may have been) were highlighted while the VC ones were not, their zeal and determination were highlighted in contrast.

  48. So I jumped into the series last night watching the episode … “This is what we do”. And, predictably, it was ALL:… “America baaaaad mmmmKay … Noble, North Vietnamese … heroic.
    I was particularly offended by the description of the Americans routinely committing “atrocities” by indiscriminately killing “innocent” civilians; poor farmers, women, and children. Even killing two men in a rice paddie … “just trying to plant rice”. All under our despicable Commanders “shoot first” rules of engagement. Burns interviewed a press corps “witness” to these “rampant atrocities”. The only thing he didn’t show was John Fitzgerald Kerry talking about genital mutilation and memories of Janejiss Kahn.
    … then …
    Burns launched into a screed about LBJ’s … “Success offensive” … a PR campaign intending to show that we were “winning” and making progress in Vietnam. But Burns claims that LBJ deliberately miscalculated and misrepresented the enemy troop strength (thus amplifying our “success). By a whopping 33%. Burns claims that LBJ did not include the “Enemy combatants” in his number of Enemy Troops. That LBJ excluded the “Part-time guerilla’s; farmers, old men, women … and even children” … who placed the mines, grenades, and booby traps that were killing and maiming our troops … that had accounted for a THIRD of all American casualties.
    So Burns … like all pacifist leftists … want it both ways … to never touch so-called “civilians” … but at the same time acknowledging and even applauding the civilian contribution to war against America. Sorry Kenny … you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim protection for a poor, poor, rice farmer stooping to hand-plant rice … who earlier in the morning dug 3 new punji stake pitfalls. And if the distinction between innocent and combatant gets blurred ? That is on the vile guerilla-war prosecutors … not on the victims of the deception.
    Sadly, this series looks to be on a par with an Oliver Stone “historical” film.

  49. I caught some of the show, pvr’d the rest… from what I’ve seen so far the series does tend to ‘glorify’ the commie side, although its not nearly as lefty bias as I thought it would be… LBJ comes off as a real creep, a malicious deceitful gangster… Kennedy, LBJ and MacNamara come off as incompetent delusional amd mendacious… interesting times to say the least… In November of 63 the CIA murdered Diem and brother in law/advisor Ngo Dinh Nhu a week later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and two Months later the Canadian flag was changed by the “Liberals” without consent from the people of Canada, definitely the beginning of the end of Canada… interesting times.

  50. Viet Nam?
    It is interesting how that war came to be called the “Television War”.
    If you trawl though the “hits of TV news” on that war, it becomes starkly obvious that there is actually only a minuscule amount of footage, endlessly repeated and “re-badged”.
    Those were the days before really portable video cameras. Most footage was shot on Bell and Howell, Bolex or Arriflex 16mm cameras, with somewhere between 3 and ten minutes of film available before a complex reload was required.
    An additional factor is that much of the footage was shot by “stringers” essentially freelance camera drivers who took some risks whilst the “hot-shots’ sat around the pool or drank cocktails on the ‘Continental Shelf” (the roof-top bar of the old Continental Hotel in downtown Saigon).
    One RARE exception was an Australian, Neil Davis, whose most famous few seconds of film are the often seen shots of the NVA tank No.843 busting into the government compound in Saigon and the young NVA soldier running forward with his flag.
    Prior to that, he had worked very close to the sharp-end in Cambodia. Here, he worked with five Cambodian photographers, cinematographers. Of the six, four were killed on the job. Davis was seriously wounded in the legs in one encounter, but recovered fairly quickly, probably because he was a supremely fit young man.
    Davis and his sound man, Bill Latch were killed on the 9th of September 1985, whilst covering one of the seemingly interminable military coups in Thailand during those times.
    There is, as one would suspect, a book on the subject:
    “One Crowded Hour” Neil Davis, combat cameraman, 1934-1985.
    Author Tim Bowden.
    Published by Collins, Australia,
    ISBN 0 00 217496 0
    The book title is a reference to a work by Thomas Mordaunt:
    “Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
    Throughout the sensual world proclaim,
    One crowded hour of glorious life
    Is worth an age without a name.”

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