Half way through Ken Burns' Vietnam series

First let me thank my fellow members of DU who served.


I am not particularly good at writing book or movie reviews since I haven't done one in nearly thirty years so I will just share with you the highlights or what I believe to be the highlights:

- Senator Fritz Hollings went to Vietnam to meet with General Westmoreland and Westmoreland told him we were killing ten Vietnamese for every American. Hollings said "Westy, Americans don't care about the ten. they care about the one."

-The soldier who said he grew up in a homogeneous community and never met an African American, a Jew. or an Hispanic and when he got to Vietnam and served with them he saw we are all pretty much the same. It reminds me of when Malcom X went to Mecca and observed that under the stars we all snore in the same language.

-The Vietnamese were brutal and their treatment of prisoners was deplorable, I would be beyond pissed if someone invaded my homeland but that's not a justification for torture.

- A soldier whose mom tells him he's not going to die because he's special. He tells his mom every mother thinks their son is special.

- Robert McNamara and his metrics. War isn't about metrics. It's about holding and capturing ground. McNamara's obsession with metrics reminds me of the quote that "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad."

- I can't get a handle on Westmoreland. Was he lying on the progress of the war or did he believe his own lies ? I made my bones in sales. I was in ad sales so I didn't have to wrestle with my conscience about selling things to people they neither needed or could afford but I was able to convince myself whatever I was selling was good for whomever bought it. Still, I wasn't responsible for people's lives.

- Westy knew ? He told LBJ he needed 200,000 more men in 1966 and that would give him a 1 in 3 chance of winning. Those odds suck .

- The footage of John McCain, freaking wow. How Chump, he of several draft deferments because of a bone spur, could disrepect his service by saying " I like people who don't get caught" and become POTUS. F the people who voted for him.

-LBJ blaming opposition to the war on Communists. Not a good look. Trumpian !

On to the second half

PEACE

-DSB