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The Vietnam War

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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,148 ✭✭✭✭Lemming


    Watched an excellent documentary titled Last days in Vietnam (I watched it on Netflix); cataloguing the build-up to & evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, starting with the signing of the Paris peace accords in 1973, Nixon's fall from office and the opportunity with which the North Vietnamese viewed his fall, precipitating their violation of the accords.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 393 ✭✭Didactic Ninja


    Lemming wrote: »
    Watched an excellent documentary titled (I watched it on Netflix); cataloguing the build-up to & evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, starting with the signing of the Paris peace accords in 1973, Nixon's fall from office and the opportunity with which the North Vietnamese viewed his fall, precipitating their violation of the accords.

    great shout. i loved it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,297 ✭✭✭✭Jawgap


    Currently on hols and re-reading this......

    428406.jpg

    .....as a prelude to watching Ken Burns' "The Vietnam War" when I get back.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 171 ✭✭Zerbini Blewitt


    I have to give credit to RTE for buying in & broadcasting this (and I remember Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War on RTE too).

    Three episodes in and Wow! Not only is this one of the best made & slickest war documentaries but one of the best made tv series of any genre.

    Most of my thoughts on “the American War” (as the Vietnamese call it) would be political rather than military. Burns just reinforces these views. The former National Liberation Front fighters interviews (one thing I don’t remember from previous documentaries) are sobering.

    Episode 3 finishes with Westmoreland’s urgent request in late ’65 to the WH for 200,000 more troops. ‘The message came as a shattering blow’ McNamara remembered. What more can be said militarily?

    Also, where its done, the quality of remastered colour footage from the sixties is mesmerising.


  • Registered Users Posts: 71 ✭✭don corleone


    The PBS documentary is outstanding. I'm absolutely hooked on it. For anyone in the same boat there is a very good podcast out there by The Washington Post called "The American War" it features interviews with the film makers after each episode aired in the US. It's a great insight into what they creators were trying to achieve in each episode and also some good discussion on the topics covered in each episode


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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,148 ✭✭✭✭Lemming


    The PBS documentary is outstanding. I'm absolutely hooked on it. For anyone in the same boat there is a very good podcast out there by The Washington Post called "The American War" it features interviews with the film makers after each episode aired in the US. It's a great insight into what they creators were trying to achieve in each episode and also some good discussion on the topics covered in each episode

    Just finished watching the PBS documentary on Netflix there a few days ago. Outstanding 18 hours and I was hooked on it. The amount of content they had access to, and those that lived through the times (or the war itself) who participated, made for compelling viewing. The only thing I would say is the last two years of the war was covered with broad strokes but that's understandable given that there is already an excellent documentary chronicling the last two years of the war.

    If you liked the PBS documentary, look up Last days in Vietnam on Netflix for a more in-depth view of what the collapse of a country looks like. It's mind-blowing in its tragedy.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 16,151 Mod ✭✭✭✭Manic Moran


    I’m slowly working my way through the Burns series, and am finding it interesting and well presented. Given that it obviously is a point of some professional study in my career as a US Army Officer, there are some pieces of backstory which may provide color or context which are missed, but if you don’t already know it, you won’t miss it. If this can skew affect your overall view of the war, I’ll decide when i’m finished.

    That said, the show is not without its critics. For example, you may not have noticed that not one single person who appeared on the show was a historian. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/09/professors-debate-role-historian-or-lack-thereof-ken-burns-and-lynn-novicks-vietnam
    Also, a number of veterans, particularly of the ARVN, had issues with the coverage.
    https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/29/veterans-angry-disappointed-following-pbs-vietnam-war-documentary/


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    Been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War on Netflix (seeing as they have discontinued his earlier and excellent series about the Civil War).

    Particularly liked the apocryphal story illustrating US Defence Secretary McNamara's frustration with his policy of using computers (such as they were in the 1960s) to help with his decision making.

    As a former business "whizz kid" ie one of the first generation of business managers to make use of computers to assist in decision making, he was a great believer in statistical analysis, operational research and systems analysis. Most Americans are, in fact.

    The problem with this is that you can only manage what you can measure, and some things just don't lend themselves to statistical analysis. As he found when, according to legend, he finally lost patience with the slow progress of the war and demanded that his staff cut to the chase, feed every piece of data, and he meant EVERY piece of data into their largest computer and ask it the simple question: "When are we going to win this war?"

    They loaded up the mainframe with everything they had: no of soldiers, no of bullets, amount of gasoline, numbers of planes, tanks, APCs, belt buckles etc etc etc programmed the computer on a Friday night and asked it the simple question. When they came back on Monday, the computer's output was ......
    You won the war on 23rd October last year!

    Maybe you'll want to watch the series to find out!


  • Registered Users Posts: 793 ✭✭✭3d4life


    End August 2020 : Remark in passing

    The American CV19 death toll to date is over three times the American death toll for the entire Vietnam war.


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,824 ✭✭✭✭Dav010


    3d4life wrote: »
    End August 2020 : Remark in passing

    The American CV19 death toll to date is over three times the American death toll for the entire Vietnam war.

    It is all about context. For instance, nearly 120k people died in car accidents in the US in the three years 17/18/19, which is double the number of US deaths in Vietnam.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 793 ✭✭✭3d4life


    Context ?

    Vietnam war : major public protests against it in the US of A while it was going on.

    CV-19 : Public protests against efforts to control it

    WTF :D

    ( If you want to get stuck into context look at Irish deaths due to drink related liver disease Vs transport deaths :( )


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,824 ✭✭✭✭Dav010


    3d4life wrote: »
    Context ?

    Vietnam war : major public protests against it in the US of A while it was going on.

    CV-19 : Public protests against efforts to control it

    WTF :D

    ( If you want to get stuck into context look at Irish deaths due to drink related liver disease Vs transport deaths :( )

    I don’t, I just wondered in what context you were relating Covid deaths to KIAs in Vietnam.


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