The Vietnam war BBC4

[Eddie Strohacker]

Anyone catch the first two eps of this last night? Fascinating, as you would expect from a Ken Burns documentary, looking at the war & it's causes from both sides.

On reflection, I think it may be the first time I've heard in any depth from the Vietnamese perspective with some very insightful interviewing, one that stuck in my head, to paraphrase - We didn't wear uniforms, so the Americans couldn't know who they were killing. If they killed a soldier, there would be one less soldier. If they killed a civilian & they usually did, they would create ten more soldiers.

[Eddie Strohacker]

Max_Torque said:

Jeez. Just watched Ep3. Brutal, just Brutal.




(amazing how easy the decision to got o war is when it's made 8,000 miles away behind a big comfy desk......)

Dulce bellum inexpertis, as they say...

[Eddie Strohacker]

Mogie Crocker's story very powerful for me. Not so much his death in the context of all the pointless slaughter, but the families' account of his life & their own pain.

[Eddie Strohacker]

Johnson was worried a second full term would kill him off. He went as far as having an actuarial survey of himself commissioned in secret, which predicted he would die at 64. It bore heavily on his decision & in the event he only lived until 1973.

[Eddie Strohacker]

The quote from those two eps for me was the Marine saying Vietnam proved to him we're killing machines & the Army is just finishing school. That & the Huey pilot who didn't seem all there as a result of his experiences.

[Eddie Strohacker]

This series has merely further confirmed the adage that very few honest men have ever set over the threshold of the White House.

[Eddie Strohacker]

QuantumTokoloshi said:

Was he talking about a change of US leadership or a change of the overseas country leadership?

U.S. It was electioneering in 1968.