Much of America, including yours truly, has been watching the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series, ‘Vietnam.’ Instead of clarifying that confusing conflict, the series has ignited fiery controversy and a lot of long-repressed anger by soft-soaping Washington’s motives.
This march to folly in Vietnam is particularly painful for me since I enlisted in the US army at the height of the war. Gripped by youthful patriotism, I strongly supported the war. In fact, the TV series even showed a pro-war march down New York’s Fifth Avenue that I had joined. Talk about déjà vu.
At the time, 1967, the Cold War was at full force. We really believed that if the US did not make a stand in Vietnam the Soviets and Chinese would overrun all of South Asia.
No one in Washington seemed to know that China and the Soviet Union had split and become bitter enemies. As ever, our foreign human intelligence was lousy. We didn’t understand that Vietnam deserved independence after a century of French colonialism. Or that what happened in Vietnam was of little importance to the rest of the world. Full story...
Related posts:
This march to folly in Vietnam is particularly painful for me since I enlisted in the US army at the height of the war. Gripped by youthful patriotism, I strongly supported the war. In fact, the TV series even showed a pro-war march down New York’s Fifth Avenue that I had joined. Talk about déjà vu.
At the time, 1967, the Cold War was at full force. We really believed that if the US did not make a stand in Vietnam the Soviets and Chinese would overrun all of South Asia.
No one in Washington seemed to know that China and the Soviet Union had split and become bitter enemies. As ever, our foreign human intelligence was lousy. We didn’t understand that Vietnam deserved independence after a century of French colonialism. Or that what happened in Vietnam was of little importance to the rest of the world. Full story...
Related posts:
- And how is Baghdad today?
- US soldier ‘found alive’ in Vietnam 44 years after being left behind.
- 33 years later, US soldier returns to Vietnam to meet the daughter of the...
- Iraq is starting to look a lot like Vietnam (if it wasn’t already)
- "They all looked alike."
- Billy Joel and Goodnight Saigon...
- Why Muhammad Ali refused to go to Vietman...
- Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King! (Here's his Vietnam speech...
- Howard Zinn: what the classroom did not teach me about the American Empire...
No comments:
Post a Comment