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Watched that a while back and it seemed well done, but I'm generally suspicious of how Ken Burns covers a subject. His Civil War documentary series was full of Lost Cause bullshit.
That said, most of the criticism for the Vietnam series seems to have come from veterans who supported the war and thought there were too many voices from Americans opposing the war and in particular veterans who became protestors. Bao Ninh, one of the North Vietnamese Army veterans who pops up quite often over the series, said he was happy with the result. He was quite salty about various things during the documentary (including Tim O'Brien, also interviewed for the series), so he would probably have been quite blunt if he'd found fault.
I bought his novel on the war, The Sorrow of War, years ago and reread it after watching the series. Can recommend it if you want to read an account of the whole mess from a perspective we don't usually get over here.
itsbruce-
Is there an Israel/Palestine version of this series? I’ve not got enough knowledge on the situation and would like to know more.
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The Sorrow of War
Thanks, I must do that. I read Tim O'Brien's book years ago. In the past I was much too accepting of the narrative that commies are bad, perhaps because of The Killing Fields. Now, although nearly all communist regimes have no legitimacy in my eyes because they lock up their critics, I can see that embracing communism is a logical reaction to colonialism. Maybe Vietnam and Laos now have 'good' communist regimes...I have no idea.
Light_EDDed
nick_h.
I am watching the whole 2017 PBS series about the Vietnam War to educate myself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vietnam_War_(TV_series) . 17 hours and it moves along at quite a clip. The lead up to the war is included, so there's masses to cover, what with French colonization, the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's death, the civil rights movement and so on.
I don't think I'll be able to enjoy Vietnam war films any more. Johnson's lies and the false premises for US escalation are so jarring. Johnson only sent US forces into combat to get elected. Otherwise North Vietnam might have won the war by '67.