i'm at home this week recovering from outpatient surgery and am finally able to watch this. i am on episode 5 now and it is really well done, but hard to watch at times.
I just finished it last week. My wife, who hates documentaries/docuseries, even found it interesting. You're right some of the scenes are hard to watch. Learned quite a bit. I didnt know of the French doing basically the same thing the decade before. Also, a bit of irony given that we helped Ho Chi Minh throw off the French yoke and encouraged them to leave Vietnam. Then we invaded. After watching it I also told my wife that if the draft was ever instituted again I would do whatever it took to get our sons disqualified.i'm at home this week recovering from outpatient surgery and am finally able to watch this. i am on episode 5 now and it is really well done, but hard to watch at times.
I was at the Hinds Co.(MS) courthouse a couple of weeks ago. There is a monument to local servicemen KIA in Vietnam. I was wondering if they included those wounded, and who eventually succumbed. I spent 2 or 3 Summers in the early 70s, clearing brush for a guy who lost his leg in 'Nam, and suffered greatly from injuries incurred over there. He eventually passed away several years later. I wonder if these monuments should include these soldiers as well?http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/2...-start-50-years-ago-sunday.html?cmpid=prn_msn
Hard to believe it has been 50 years. Lost a high school classmate with the USMC at Khe-Sanh. Rest in Peace, Johnny.
What is even worse is that we have done the same damn thing in Afghanistan. The Russsians waged war for 13 years against the Afghans before finally quitting and leaving and we have been there 15+ years. Nobody ever learns.I just finished it last week. My wife, who hates documentaries/docuseries, even found it interesting. You're right some of the scenes are hard to watch. Learned quite a bit. I didnt know of the French doing basically the same thing the decade before. Also, a bit of irony given that we helped Ho Chi Minh throw off the French yoke and encouraged them to leave Vietnam. Then we invaded. After watching it I also told my wife that if the draft was ever instituted again I would do whatever it took to get our sons disqualified.
We made the decision to go to war there with "Cold War" thinking instead recognizing what was really happening- the end of colonization/imperialism by the West in SE Asia.
I think they probably saw Ho as an independent entity, and someone who wouldn't cooperate with US goals in the region.The blame for the war tends to focus on the U.S. for supporting the Saigon bunch, who were not really good guys.
I've often wondered how much blame H Chi Minh deserves for not grabbing the nearest OSS guy in the late 1940s and telling him, "Look, I'm a Vietnamese nationalist. I'm also a socialist. But I am not a Communist."
I wonder how many Vietnamese died as a result of Ho not doing that?
Maybe Ho breathed too deeply of the Marxism he was fed in France.
The answer would have been "Sorry Ho, we're giving you back to the French because we need them to be a bulwark against the Russians in Europe. The elections that were promised? Sorry bout that."The blame for the war tends to focus on the U.S. for supporting the Saigon bunch, who were not really good guys.
I've often wondered how much blame H Chi Minh deserves for not grabbing the nearest OSS guy in the late 1940s and telling him, "Look, I'm a Vietnamese nationalist. I'm also a socialist. But I am not a Communist."
I wonder how many Vietnamese died as a result of Ho not doing that?
Maybe Ho breathed too deeply of the Marxism he was fed in France.
When that hypothetical conversation happened would matter. In 1945, the U.S. pushed the Brits to occupy French Indochina because the French were just not up to it yet.The answer would have been "Sorry Ho, we're giving you back to the French because we need them to be a bulwark against the Russians in Europe. The elections that were promised? Sorry bout that."