Burns’ The Vietnam War delivers history’s lessons

After watching the first two episodes of the comprehensive and high-quality 10-part documentary The Vietnam War, now airing on PBS stations throughout America, I decided to change the play at the line of scrimmage. I shelved what I had already written on another topic in order to offer a few comments about this sobering and even-handed documentary, one which has been described as a “staggering achievement,” among many other superlatives.

No matter what I write, my words will fall woefully short of describing how well done this documentary is. The only way one can truly appreciate its essence and profound educational value is to view it from beginning to end. It’s an important history lesson we all need and can learn from, especially if we watch with an open mind and a thirst for knowledge.

Investing the necessary time to watch this much-heralded documentary will be time well spent. “It clocks in at 18 hours, a length as daunting as its subject, yet worth every single minute of your time,” wrote television critic Hank Stuever in the Washington Post, adding it should be “required viewing” for the American people. I agree. If you haven’t been tuned in, it’s not too late to do so. PBS shows reruns of all the episodes that have already aired and there are six episodes that have yet to be shown, with the next one set for tonight.

Beginning with his masterpiece on the Civil War introduced to the country in 1990, Ken Burns is widely recognized as our nation’s most trusted documentarian of history. Along with his co-producer and co-director, Lynn Novick, Burns spent 10 years painstakingly researching, filming and editing this documentary on the Vietnam War. He first began thinking about revisiting the war several decades ago but decided the memories of it were still too raw and the national psyche wasn’t ready for it. So he decided to wait. With the passage of time, it’s now possible for all of us to more objectively analyze and better understand why and how the United States got entangled in Vietnam in the midst of the Cold War and to put into proper perspective what it did to our country, what it did to those Americans who bravely and devotedly sacrificed so much to fight a costly war that was unwinnable, and how it impacted those at home who chose to speak out against the “deception and delusion” that fed a war they thought was wrong, immoral and not in our nation’s best interests.

The Vietnam War was one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history. Largely because of the war and the extreme division and chaos it wrought, our country almost came apart at the seams in the 1960s and early 1970s. Vietnam seemed to call everything into question. Many Americans lost their faith and trust in their government and political leaders. The tragic and hurtful consequences the war had on our country in real time still echoes all these years later. In some ways, it still haunts us. Burns puts it this way: “The seeds of disunion we experience today, the polarization, the lack of civil discourse all had their seeds in Vietnam.” Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times makes this point about the documentary: “It offers an uncannily well-timed reflection of our current societal fractures—a kind of origin story for the culture wars that still have us asking: Which side are you on?”

The Vietnam War documentary is must-see television you can trust with no agenda other than to teach us history and to make us think. It offers a wide range of perspectives and personal stories. This isn’t fiction, it isn’t “fake news” and it isn’t some inane “reality show.” All of this actually happened. This is the real deal, as real as it gets. The film is factual, evidence-based and all-encompassing, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions based on what they learn by watching and listening.

As Stuever observes: “The experience of watching The Vietnam War includes terror, horror, disbelief, discovery, disgust, marvel, pride, ambivalence and tears. You’ll lose count of how many times you have to pick your jaw up off the floor, even when the facts ring vaguely familiar.”

Maybe this documentary will reinforce the lessons we should have learned from Vietnam but sometimes seem to forget. Neil Sheehan, who reported extensively for the New York Times on the Vietnam War, offered this observation in the documentary: “We thought we were the exceptions to history—the Americans. History didn’t apply to us. We could never fight a bad war, we could never represent the wrong cause—we were Americans. Vietnam proved we were not an exception to history.”