Underneath the beautiful green meadows of peace are mountains of bones
October 31, 2017 7:24 PM Subscribe
The First Time I Met Americans. "The first time I ever saw Americans was when I was 12 years old. It wasn’t actually blond-haired, blue-eyed Americans that I was seeing up close. The Americans I saw that day were F-4 Phantom bombers, brutally attacking small towns on the shore of Ha Long Bay. It was Aug. 5, 1964, and I was at the beach on a school trip, swimming with my classmates. That was right after the Tonkin Gulf incident, the day President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his decision to expand the war throughout Vietnam."
"Bao Ninh is one of the finest voices of the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary about the Vietnam War: clear, eloquent, fair. He was a soldier for the North Vietnamese, and he wrote an important novel about it, “The Sorrow of War,” banned at first in the north, published in English in 1993." -NYTimes, Steven Erlanger
"Bao Ninh is one of the finest voices of the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary about the Vietnam War: clear, eloquent, fair. He was a soldier for the North Vietnamese, and he wrote an important novel about it, “The Sorrow of War,” banned at first in the north, published in English in 1993." -NYTimes, Steven Erlanger
Bombs and artillery from the American Seventh Fleet killed 32 people in my extended family in 1965 alone.
Even we war protestors, in the 60s, had no idea of the extent of the suffering of the Vietnamese people. At least I didn't. Nor was the tragedy of war personalized at all in the mass media at the time. The incessant suffering of American soldiers was apparent, among the constant trumpeting of body counts, but Americans were not ever made aware of what the Vietnamese suffered. I hear that the Ken Burns TV show documented the experience of our "enemies." OK, good. But too little, too late. Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran (going back to 1953), East Timor, and etc. America has never paused in perpetuating its imperialist atrocities in my lifetime, a pattern that goes back more than a century, to the unfortunate conduct of our military forces in the Philippines, something about which Mark Twain had much to say.
posted by kozad at 9:12 PM on October 31, 2017 [18 favorites]
Even we war protestors, in the 60s, had no idea of the extent of the suffering of the Vietnamese people. At least I didn't. Nor was the tragedy of war personalized at all in the mass media at the time. The incessant suffering of American soldiers was apparent, among the constant trumpeting of body counts, but Americans were not ever made aware of what the Vietnamese suffered. I hear that the Ken Burns TV show documented the experience of our "enemies." OK, good. But too little, too late. Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran (going back to 1953), East Timor, and etc. America has never paused in perpetuating its imperialist atrocities in my lifetime, a pattern that goes back more than a century, to the unfortunate conduct of our military forces in the Philippines, something about which Mark Twain had much to say.
posted by kozad at 9:12 PM on October 31, 2017 [18 favorites]
We're doing a film text that is set during the Vietnam war. I had a kid ask me today "who were the good guys?" I explained that wars don't have good guys and bad guys, just sides...
posted by freethefeet at 11:49 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by freethefeet at 11:49 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]
as much as i enjoyed the burns/novick series...they sure glossed over a couple of important deceptions:
- the tonkin gulf engagement was a complete sham in order to dupe the american public
- my lai: no discussion at all of colin powell's participation in the cover up/investigation (tldr he found nothing untoward despite being provided a letter describing a first-hand account)
posted by j_curiouser at 12:36 AM on November 1, 2017 [9 favorites]
- the tonkin gulf engagement was a complete sham in order to dupe the american public
- my lai: no discussion at all of colin powell's participation in the cover up/investigation (tldr he found nothing untoward despite being provided a letter describing a first-hand account)
posted by j_curiouser at 12:36 AM on November 1, 2017 [9 favorites]
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posted by bonobothegreat at 8:00 PM on October 31, 2017 [5 favorites]