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The Vietnam War

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by lcjjdnh, Sep 18, 2017.

  1. lcjjdnh

    lcjjdnh Well-Known Member

    Anyone watching the new documentary from Ken Burns? Caught the first 45 minutes or so last night--enjoying it so far. He's been working on it since the GWB administration, according to an interview I heard this weekend.
     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I've set it to record but still am not sure if I'll invest the time. I'll probably give it a couple of episodes.

    Kinda Burnsed out though tbh.
     
  3. Dyno

    Dyno Well-Known Member

    I watched last night, and plan to watch the rest, but I'm traveling and since I'll miss tonight's installment, I won't watch the rest until the weekend at the earliest. I enjoyed part one. I just got done reading Mark Bowden's newest, "Hue 1968," so my Vietnam immersion continues. I highly recommend the book.
     
  4. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    If you've got a Roku device, you can stream them from the PBS channel.

    I missed the start, so I'm going to try to play through the whole first episode before tonight.
     
    lcjjdnh likes this.
  5. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Watched last night. The time jumps were kind of odd to me.
     
    Vombatus likes this.
  6. trifectarich

    trifectarich Well-Known Member

    Didn't especially like tossing current interview snippets into the timeline of events from 60 years ago, even before U.S. involvement, but I learned a lot from the opening 90 minutes.
     
    Stoney, lcjjdnh and Vombatus like this.
  7. lcjjdnh

    lcjjdnh Well-Known Member

    Had the same thought. Also, and perhaps I'm dense, but it wasn't clear to me whether the vintage footage they were showing of US soldiers was actually of the person that was being interviewed, or just random stock footage they were throwing in.
     
  8. Stoney

    Stoney Well-Known Member

    That was throwing me at first as well. I've a hard enough time keeping my timeline straight without random leaps to 20 years later.

    But otherwise I enjoyed it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2017
  9. CD Boogie

    CD Boogie Well-Known Member

    Gonna get to this right after I binge watch all the seasons of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Narcos. In other words, never.
     
  10. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    That's funny. Mrs. Whitman and I are in "Breaking Bad" hell right now, too. Everything else is on hold until we dig ourselves out.
     
  11. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    While Ken Burns is generally losing his fastball, I thought the first installment did a good job of illustrating the fact that Ho Chi Minh's army was more freedom fighter than communist at the outset and how the US could have positioned it as the end of colonialism rather than a fight against communism if not for anti-communist fervor and misguided loyalty to de Gaulle following WWII.
     
  12. Stoney

    Stoney Well-Known Member

    This echoes one of @BTExpress' favored themes and is what struck me as well. Seems Ho Chi Minh dearly wanted to be our friend and ally when the mess began (and was so during WWII), admiringly quoted our founding fathers, implored us not to get hung up on the communism thing as that wasn't really what he was primarily about, etc.

    But instead of responding to his overtures, we essentially forced him into the Soviet bloc corner with our intransigence and insistence on unconditionally backing France in its efforts to re-assert colonial rule.

    Such an utter miscalculation. If only we'd had the balls at the outset to tell France "Sorry, your days of being their colonial masters are over."
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2017
    Ace, Vombatus and BTExpress like this.
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