Anh Lê Says Burns & Novick "The Vietnam War" Is Time for U.S. Reflection

SAN FRANCISCO - Sept. 22, 2017 - PRLog -- Posted Courtesy of Wright Enterprises~~

Ken Burns and Lynn Novicks's documentary "The Vietnam War": An opportunity to examine ourselves, our nation

By Anh Lê

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary series, "The Vietnam War," provides us a new opportunity to examine the history of the War, and to examine ourselves and our nation.

During the French-Indochina War, my father was imprisoned and tortured by the French for two years.  He was beaten, tortured, with electric shocks all over his body including his genitals. He was imprisoned because he was a Vietnamese, and a highly educated one, a graduate of the University of Hanoi.  My mother was raped.

During the American War, my father, a diplomat in Europe and later a professor, yearned and prayed for peace in his homeland of Vietnam.  My mother did not see her family for decades due to the war.  Our family prayed for peace daily, hoping that the raining of bombs from B-52's would cease.

Since the war ended in 1975, Vietnamese Americans have referred to April 30 with different words.  Some call it "mat nuoc" ("loss of country"), most commemorate the day as "giai phong" ("liberation").  "Ngay thong nhat" ("day of reunification") and "Bac va Nam thong thuong" ("42 years of the Vietnamese people in the North and South regions traveling freely as a people of a reunified country") are also phrases used to refer to the end of the war.  Regardless of one's perspective, "Ngay thong nhat" and "Bac va Nam thong thuong" are incontrovertible facts.

The war was a tragedy.  It was waged due to a post-colonial period and Cold War mentality, a misguided American foreign policy, and anti-Communist propaganda from the White House, Congress, the American government, the Pentagon and military, and the series of propped-up governments in Saigon.

The U.S. government propped up the government of Ngo Dinh Diem.  Diem convinced the U.S. government that Ho Chi Minh, who had defeated the French, was a Communist and would take over Vietnam.  All Diem had to say was the word, "Communist," and he knew that the  American government would react like a knee-jerk reflex.

The American people were deceived and misled by their government and Diem, indoctrinated that the U.S. must send economic and military aid to South Vietnam to defeat Communism, fed the propaganda of the "domino theory": "If South Vietnam falls to the 'Commies,' the entire region would collapse like 'dominos.'"

President Lyndon Baines Johnson deceived the American people with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, claiming that North Vietnamese boats had attacked an American destroyer.  Congress gave Johnson the authority to escalate the war.  Only 2 Senators voted against the Resolution.  There had been no attack.

The U.S. bombing in Vietnam was four times that of U.S. and British bombing of Germany in World War II.  The U.S. unleashed all its armaments on the people of Vietnam: B-52's, napalm, cluster bombs, Agent Orange and herbicides, minings of the port of Haiphong, aircraft carriers and jet fighters.

The My Lai Massacre, where American soldiers killed over 500 babies, women, and men, was not an isolated incident.  The My Lai Massacre was not an aberration.  Soldiers were brainwashed that Vietnamese were "the enemy," "gooks," "dinks."

The  destruction of villages and towns, rapes, tortures, "shoot anything that moves," Kim Phuc the naked young girl running down the country road and screaming with pain from the napalm on her body, are seared in our collective conscience.

When Saigon fell and the war ended in 1975, who was the victor and who the vanquished?  Regardless of one's perspective, certain facts left their indelible marks: More than 58,000 Americans died.  Millions of Vietnamese troops from all regions of Vietnam were killed .  More than 3 million Vietnamese children and adult civilians perished.  Millions more were left widowed and orphaned.

The spraying of Agent Orange not only destroyed much of Vietnam's landscape, these herbicides remain in Vietnam's soil and waterways, causing birth defects, deformities, and cancers.  Yet, the U.S. government has not rendered any assistance to the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange and their families for life long care and medical treatment.

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If it's difficult to look at the legacy of birth defects and deformaties caused by Agent Orange, what is it like to live the reality of that legacy?https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/opinion/agent-orange-vietnam-effects.html?mcubz=1).

http://www.businessinsider.com/paula-bronsteins-photos-of-disabled-agent-orange-vietnamese-2014-7)