Looking Back on Vietnam: Ken Burns’ Bleak Flick
THE ISSUE: The filmmaker’s PBS documentary on the Vietnam War, which began airing on Sunday.
I’m grateful to Bing West for his commentary on Ken Burns’ Vietnam war documentary (“Pride and Prejudice,” Post-Opinion, Sept. 20).
As a fellow Vietnam veteran, it is disgraceful to witness a respected documentary filmmaker offer such one-sided viewpoints.
It makes me suspect that all of Burns’ work was made with such bias.
While the protesters throughout the years have embraced their own philosophy on Vietnam, many who served during the war are proud Americans.
The glorification of demonstrators as patriots demeans the entire era and leaves anyone who doesn’t know better thinking that all who served were complete idiots.
These lopsided opinions continue to perpetuate negativity about the Vietnam War.
Craig Schwab
Glendale
I totally disagree that Burns’ documentary missed the pride and patriotism of Vietnam veterans.
What pride was to be found in that war? Just like the Iraq War, which we’ve been fighting for 17 years, America should never have been in Vietnam.
The government still lies and feeds us its propaganda, but the truth is we sent those tough, brave soldiers to the jungle to die for nothing.
Herb Goss
McVeytown
What I’ve read of Burns’ documentary doesn’t coincide with the other research I’ve done on Vietnam.
The Tet offensive was North Vietnam’s last attempt to overwhelm the South, and it failed.
All that was left for the Americans and South Vietnamese to do was to mop up. It would have ended the war in victory for the South.
I haven’t seen the documentary, nor do I want to relive an era where Democrats controlled the government and the war.
Bruce Springsteen sang that we were sent to Vietnam to kill the Vietnamese, when in reality we were there to help keep the people of South Vietnam free from communism, and we weren’t successful.
John Clabough
Pine Bush
Burns’ documentary compels us to revisit the horrors of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, countries that never threatened the United States.
These countries suffered a staggering 3.8 million deaths. A large number of civilians continue to suffer horrific birth defects from exposure to chemicals.
The United States sprayed more than 20 million gallons of various herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1961 to 1971.
Oblivious to the dangers, US serviceman used the empty 55-gallon drums for makeshift showers.
Agent Orange, which contained the deadly chemical, dioxin, was the most commonly used herbicide. It was later proven to cause serious health issues — including cancer, birth defects, rashes and severe psychological and neurological problems — among the Vietnamese people as well as returning US servicemen and their families.
The long, tortuous history of Vietnam and Agent Orange should shame all Americans
Jagjit Singh
Los Altos, Calif.
Burns is a leftist and can be trusted to spin the ill-fated contest in Vietnam. His thesis is to emphasize that “we were engaged in a war we couldn’t win.” But America faced not only the Viet Cong, but The New York Times and Walter Cronkite.
In those days, the course of public opinion ran through the three major networks, and CBS in particular had a history of denigrating the American military and the war effort.
President Lyndon Johnson, whose heart was never in the war, capitulated: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”
With a defeatist attitude, Johnson was a fretful commander-in-chief.
In short, Johnson’s hesitant approach foreordained an attenuated war and an eventual defeat as the American public wearied of the contest and came to believe that we did not want to win.
Kenneth Steele
Bensalem, Pa..