Ken Burns’ Ultimate Failure in Vietnam

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Geoffrey C. Ward, Henry Kissinger, Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Mac Cleland, Man's Search for Meaning, North Vietnam, PBS, Peter Coyote, Public Broadcasting System, The Vietnam War, veterans, Viet Cong, Vietnam, Viktor Frankl

By all means, Watch the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick PBS documentary, The Vietnam War if you haven’t already. At the same time, don’t expect to learn anything important about the conflict as a whole, and especially about its historical or current policy significance, unless you know nothing or almost nothing about it. Moreover, as a result, consider the series an enormous missed opportunity, since disputes over the reasons for U.S. involvement and for the outcome keep shaping many of America’s biggest foreign policy controversies, and since television is how so many in the nation get so much of their information about these subjects.

In fairness, Burns and Novick have expressed discomfort with the notion that they tried, or should have tried, to provide definitive answers to the “Why” of Vietnam and the follow-on issue of lessons to be learned. Here’s how Burns described his view of his work’s distinctive contributions to the Vietnam canon – at least in its non-fiction film and video form:

“What we wanted to do was benefit from the 40-plus years of new scholarship and the willingness of veterans from all sides to speak. To have access to the country and tell not just a top-down story of policy — or failed policy, depending on your point of view — but to do a bottom-up story of the human dimensions of the war. We also felt that the Vietnam War has been so politicized that it’s almost impossible to find out what actually happened during it. The story we’re telling is not devoid of the politics — it’s certainly an important component — but I think it takes its rightful place in relationship to battles that most Americans have never heard of and campaigns and decisions that they were probably not aware were made in their name.”

He added, in the same interview:

“There are many, many lessons of Vietnam. It’s the most important event in American history since the Second World War. It is something that did not turn out very well for the United States, so a lot of people have ignored it and buried their heads in the sand. It’s a source of great anxiety and often anger and bitterness and people find themselves in their own corner, unable to budge. What we tried to do was create an environment with lots of different perspectives honored and coexisting.”

But in another interview, Novick suggested a more ambitious goal:

“This was a very traumatic, difficult and painful moment in American history, and we as a country have never really dealt with it. Our hope was that we could delve into it, try to understand it, put the pieces together in an organized way and perhaps help our country talk about something it really needs to talk about.”

Even if you take a “Just the facts, Ma’am” view of the aim of “trying to understand” the war, or believe that Burns and Novick simply want to help Americans (and any others) make up their own minds, her answer begs too many crucial questions. For example, what substantive guidelines did they use in their effort to “put the pieces together in an organized way”? Even the ostensibly simplest, chronological narrative results from decisions to include or omit, especially on television or in films and videos. How do they explain what was put in and what was left out?

More important, what aspect or aspects of the war do the auteurs think is not understood? What do they themselves now understand that they was unknown to them before? If they keep declining to answer those questions, then it’s difficult to avoid concluding that they haven’t yet formulated any – and that either they have nothing to say on this paramount issue, and/or that they (astonishingly) haven’t seen the need to come to their own explanations, and/or they have, but they’re concealing them for some reason. None of these possibilities is flattering.

I lean toward the first two choices, and for a reason that in my view, anyway, is pretty unflattering itself: Burns and Novick have never actually seen their project as an exercise in either narrative or analytical history. Instead, they conceived it as an exercise in psychotherapy, certainly for everyone directly touched by the war, and perhaps for the nation as a whole.

Further, compelling evidence is provided by the opening and closing minutes of The Vietnam War itself. The first words spoken in Episode One are from former Marine Corps officer Karl Marlantes, who states (with dignity, to be sure), “Coming home from Vietnam was as close to traumatic as the war itself.” He continued “For years, nobody talked about Vietnam….the whole country was like that….It was so divisive. And it’s like living in a family with an alcoholic father: ‘Shhh. We don’t talk about that.’”

Marlantes is followed immediately by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a leading supporter of prosecuting the war, asking immediately following the fall of Saigon to communist forces in 1975, contending, “What we need now in this country is to heal the wounds, and to put Vietnam behind us.”

And soon after comes Max Cleland, a former U.S. Senator and Veterans Administration chief who was cripplingly wounded during the war:

“Viktor Frankl, who survived the death camps in World War II, wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. You know, ‘To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in suffering.’ And for those of us who suffered because of Vietnam, that’s been our quest ever since.”

This focus is made even more explicit at the end of the tenth and final episode. Narrator Peter Coyote somberly recites the denouement that surely presents the most important takeaway according to Burns and Novick (and script writer Geoffrey C. Ward, an eminent historian):

“More than four decades after the war ended, the divisions it created between Americans have not yet wholly healed. Lessons were learned, and then forgotten. Divides were bridged, and then widened. Old secrets were revealed, and new secrets were locked away. The Vietnam War was a tragedy, immeasurable and irredeemable. But meaning can be found in the individual stories of those who lived through it – stories of courage and comradeship and perseverance, of understanding and forgiveness, and ultimately, reconciliation.”

I don’t mean to belittle the value of psychotherapy. Or healing. Or closure. Or any such disciplines or accomplishments. The veterans living, dead, and wounded (physically and psychologically), and their families and friends, deserve no less. The same applies of course for their Vietnamese counterparts. (And in this vein, one of the most stunning revelations in “The Vietnam War” is that at least some reconsideration of the conflict’s necessity and worth has been taking place on the victorious North Vietnamese/Viet Cong side, and that those with second thoughts are willing to express them on camera.) But when creating content for the public arena, should these be the highest priority objectives? Aren’t they more appropriately administered or achieved in private?

Unless Burns and Novick believe that the these personal subjects shed meaningful light on national life and behavior as well? I don’t rule that out, either, but the logically consequent idea – that, like individuals, countries mainly act as they do because collectively they are psychologically healthy or unhealthy, or virtuous and altruistic, or arrogant or selfish or complacent or conceited – seems reductionist, and frankly childish, to me. Just as bad: What’s the solution for these kinds of problems? A new nation-wide Great Awakening?

Again, if you know little or nothing about the Vietnam War, the Burns-Novick documentary is a fine introduction. It’s important also for viewers whose knowledge, whether extensive or meager, is limited to textbooks or even academic studies. For the visuals powerfully underscore Burns’ above description the war as American history’s most important post-World War II event – an assessment with which I strongly agree.

Unfortunately, the film offers no coherent explanation why. Forty years later after Vietnam, barely a decade after the end of another divisive war, in Iraq, as a conflict in Afghanistan approaches its second decade, and as America’s elites continue displaying no ability to think sensibly and pragmatically about the country’s vital foreign interests, it’s a failure that’s no longer excusable.

Im-Politic: A Vacuum at the Heart of The Vietnam War

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1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary, 1968 presidential election, Eugene J. McCarthy, hawks, Im-Politic, Ken Burns, Le Duan, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lynn Novick, military draft, North Vietnam, Patrick Hangopian, PBS, public opinion, South Vietnam, Tet offensive, The Vietnam War, Viet Cong, Vietnam

I was planning on waiting till I saw its end to comment on the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick PBS documentary series, The Vietnam War, since analyzing anything without seeing the whole seems like a great formula for missing something important. But the episode on the January-July, 1968 period (“Things Fall Apart”) covers such a critical period, forthrightly raises so many of most painful questions generated for both supporters and opponents of the war, and then fails so completely to answer them, that this segment seems worth its own posting.

To remind, those first months of 1968 created one of the war’s major turning points; principally, they witnessed the Tet offensive shockingly launched at the end of January by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces against a wide range of targets in South Vietnam. The ferocity and scope of the attacks seemed to discredit completely official American claims of solid progress versus the enemy, and led to levels of U.S. public backing for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s strategy dropping below critical levels, to Johnson’s stunning announcement that he would not seek a second term in office, and to the start of peace talks.

But even that description, which I tried to make as neutral as possible, can be challenged from several standpoints, and these challenges explain much of the frustration I felt watching “Things Fall Apart.”

First some truth in advertising. My strong opposition to the war dates to sometime around 1970 (somewhat later than that of many friends); I would have been a high school junior or senior at the time. Was some of it self-serving? You be the judge: I wasn’t technically a draft dodger, since I received an entirely legal, non-faked 4-F medical deferment. Also, by the time I received my very low (13) lottery number, in 1971, it seemed increasingly clear that the role of American ground troops was cresting, and there was no chance that I’d be flying over Vietnam in an air war that actually intensified. And of course, even at the conflict’s height, the vast majority of U.S. military personnel in the country were volunteers, and most of them were stationed behind the lines (though hardly out of danger).

But even though odds were my skin would have been safe had I been inducted or not, who could really be certain that American politicians would keep their Vietnamization promises over time? Moreover, I was able to avoid any service at all both through an accident of birth and thanks to family circumstances not available to so many of the young Americans who did fight and die or suffer physical and psychological wounds.

Everything I’ve learned since then about the conflict, however, has only deepened my conviction that U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was a ghastly, and in Constitutional terms, criminal mistake, which sought goals not remotely worth the sacrifice in American blood and treasure. It’s easy, consequently, for me personally to find the basic Burns-Novick narrative about early 1968 entirely convincing.

But there have so many flies in this ointment! For example, Tet no doubt was thoroughly discouraging to supporters of the war (including, at that time, yours truly). As The Vietnam War makes clear, Johnson administration assessments of the fight to keep South Vietnam in the non-communist world were invariably much rosier than circumstances warranted. In fact, just before Tet, U.S. officials were sounding especially optimistic that North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units were being “ground down,” and had lost their early momentum. How, then, could they stage attacks the length and breadth of South Vietnam, including fighting their way into the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, and holding out in the old imperial capital of Hue for a month?

Certainly elites, especially in the media and politics, were shaken. Certainly, it was the predominant reason for Johnson’s decision about the 1968 presidential race. But the American people? There’s considerable evidence that Tet did not suddenly convince masses of the public that it the time had come for the United States to get out. This 2008 journal article ably summarizes the polling evidence giving grounds for doubt. As Patrick Hagopian of Britain’s Lancaster University has documented, Tet-period surveys generally confirmed and solidified popular dissatisfaction that had been growing since Johnson began greatly escalating the American military effort in 1965.

Just as important, many of the war’s critics actually wanted Johnson to take off the gloves and attack the foe much more energetically – and presumably decisively. In Hagopian’s words. “The majority of Americans identified themselves as ‘hawks’ before the Tet offensive, and their number actually peaked in the immediate aftermath of the offensive, indicating a wish to strike back against the communists. The Tet offensive therefore did not just increase opposition to the war, it intensified the views of hawks who saw the options as ‘fight or get out.’”

Indeed,as Hagopian notes, in the critical March 12, 1968 New Hampshire primary that helped convince Johnson to bow out of the race because of peace candidate Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s strong showing, “the majority of those who voted for [the grassroots challenger] were Vietnam war hawks who thought that President Johnson was not escalating the war fast enough. This was a repudiation of Johnson’s policies, but it was a protest vote by the hawks and not by people who supported McCarthy’s antiwar stance.” Burns and Novick do refer to this result briefly in The Vietnam War, but it’s treated as a mere footnote and simply left hanging.

Fly in the ointment number two concerns the on-the-ground results of Tet itself. Here Burns and McCarthy admirably embrace a view that still appears far from the conventional wisdom:  Tet was not only a devastating military defeat for the communist side. It was a devastating political defeat. For the offensive’s planners, notably North Vietnamese Communist Party chief Le Duan, expected the attacks to end the war once and for all by sparking a nation-wide revolt against the “puppet” Saigon government. Yet the South Vietnamese populace overwhelmingly stood beside its leaders. And the big domestic political change in the country brought about by Tet was the effective destruction of the southern dominated Viet Cong as a fighting – and major political – force.

The trouble for the documentary is that the Burns and Novick treatment of Tet’s impact on the South Vietnamese people in “Things Fall Apart” clashes violently with their portrayal of that nation’s leaders and their following. In all the previous episodes I’ve seen (that is, all save the first), South Vietnam’s leaders were depicted as incompetent, corrupt, and often both. Their political support, meanwhile, was dismissed as minimal, especially in the countryside that contained some 80 percent of South Vietnam’s people. Further, what the filmmakers tell viewers time and time again is that in the eyes of this highly nationalistic demographic, the Saigon government was also crippled politically by its heavy dependence on foreign (U.S.) backing, and that the American soldiers who strove to prop them up were generally seen as “invaders.”

Yet when this population had the chance to throw out these purportedly illegitimate leaders, most refused.

One possible explanation is that the Saigon government was seen as the lesser of two evils, but this is not an argument that Burns and Novick make. The filmmakers allude to public backing for neutralist and/or Buddhist leaders who favored a negotiated solution to the war, but these references never go beyond the allusion phase – at least not through the end of “Things Fall Apart.” So the South Vietnamese reaction to Tet (and this also includes the Burns-Novick description of a hitherto inept South Vietnamese military that made a major turnaround during Tet and often fought valiantly and effectively) is left as a total mystery.

As a result, also left completely unexamined is the potentially earthshaking but logical (at least) conclusion that can be drawn from these two flies in the ointment – that from a purely military perspective, U.S. leaders had a more accurate understanding of the war than is widely recognized. Specifically, after Tet, the tide on the battlefield had finally turned to a generally neglected extent, and that more persistence may well have produced a conclusion much better for the United States – and even arguably for the South Vietnamese people – than the total victory won by the North. Indeed, why had Hanoi at long last agreed to negotiations in 1968 after only a partial American bombing halt? Because it was still confident of triumphing militarily?

So how come I’m still an opponent of the war? For the reason stated above. No attainable goal in Vietnam could reasonably justify the price paid by America – more than 58,000 dead; some $1 trillion in 2011 (likely a conservative estimate); a broken, divided society; a wounded, distorted economy. Nor am I persuaded by an argument made by some revisionist scholars and other analysts – that the benefits extended well past Vietnam, and that the war is best seen as a delaying action that enabled the whole of East Asia to avoid communist rule and establish the foundations of its more recent stability and prosperity. If these were indeed products of Vietnam, the price for the United States still would have been wildly excessive, in my opinion.

But these subjects are much more deserving of public national debate than they’ve received so far, especially since the United States has found itself in several other unpopular, unsuccessful wars in spite of defeat in Vietnam, and surely stayed out of several other likely unpopular conflicts because of it. They also deserve much more discussion that devoted by Burns and Novick. The Vietnam War has been touted as a documentary that will help Americans better understand an historic episode that continues powerfully shaping the present in more ways than I suspect many recognize. Its treatment of crucial questions in “Things Fall Apart” makes me wonder whether it will even approach achieving this goal.