San Francisco Writer Anh Lê Reviews Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's "The Vietnam War"

SAN FRANCISCO - Oct. 10, 2017 - PRLog -- Posted Originally Courtesy of Wright Enterprises...

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary, "The Vietnam War," is a misnomer.

The title suggests that it is a definitive history of the War in Viet Nam.  It is not.

Burns and Novick's title suggests that it offers a critical, objective, and unbiased examination and analysis of the War in Viet Nam.  It does not.

The title suggests that the documentary employs the best approach and methods to look in-depth at the history of the War in Viet Nam, to search for the truth that it reveals, so that we - - Vietnamese, Vietnamese Americans, and Americans, alike, and our fellow human beings, "can learn from the lessons of the Viet Nam War."  It does not.

The best and most rigorous approaches and methods to studying history - - historiography - - are not present in Burns and Novick's work.

This is unfortunate and disappointing, considering that the 10-parts series took 10 years to produce.

One acknowledges that this documentary contains elements which deserve credit.

For example, Burns and Novick does utilize some interviews of Vietnamese.

The amount of archival materials and film footage is impressive.

Some of the staged film footage, however, is misleading, as it is in the "made for TV drama" and "Hollywood-ish" genre, especially when it supports a narrative or script that is flawed, incorrect, or false.

While watching this documentary, as one listens to the narrator, it is fairly clear that some or many parts of the script itself and the narrative of the script itself, are based simply on the press releases, narratives, and archival materials which originated from the Pentagon, the White House, the U.S. military in Viet Nam, and the United States government.  In that sense, it, unfortunately, perpetuates still today a very warped, biased, pro-U.S. military, pro-U.S. government view of the history of the Viet Nam War.

It perpetuates and glorifies the U.S. government's and U.S. military's own justification of their waging the war in Viet Nam: "the United States' idealism;" "the United States' view of itself," and its sense of 'Exceptionalism.'"

As long as such views of the Viet Nam War continue to be perpetuated, the "lessons of the Viet Nam War" will never be learned, and "What have we learned from the Viet Nam War?," is just a farcifal rhetorical phrase and hypocritical and self-deluding so-called question.

The early part of the documentary begins with, "the war was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings."

Burns and Novicks' thesis not only displays their bias, but results in the perpetuation of a false and misleading narrative of why the U.S. waged war in Viet Nam and how and why it continued to escalate it, at the cost of the deaths of over 58,000 American soldiers and the killings and slaughter of up to 4 million Vietnamese.  Millions of Vietnamese were orphaned and widowed.

Throughout Burns and Novick's documentary, whenever Vietnamese women, men, and young people are rounded up and captured by U.S. soldiers and ARVN soldiers, they are referred to as "Viet Cong," "Viet Cong sympathizers," and "North Vietnamese soldiers."  This narrative is false.  Ordinary Vietnamese people dressed in black clothing are not "Viet Cong," "Viet Cong sympathizers," nor "North Vietnamese soldiers."

Similarly, throughout the documentary, whenever dead Vietnamese bodies are shown, they are referred to as "Viet Cong," "Viet Cong sympathizers," and "North Vietnamese soldiers."  Again, this narrative is completely false.

In his book, "Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson," Willson described what he witnessed in Viet Nam conducting military assessments of the results of U.S. bombing missions.

"On my trips in April to visit the 'targets' of our bombings, what I found were the blackened, mangled and maimed bodies of women and children, innocents who had been destroyed by U.S. napalm."

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