Ken Burns Vietnam War Series


Recommended Posts

I have been watching the Ken Burns  series on the Viet Nam War.   Ken does not disappoint.  His series has the same fine quality as his world famous series on the Civil War.  As I watched Ep 3 of 10  I was reminded of the presidential race between Lyndon Johnson  and Barry Goldwater.  I was warned that if I voted for Barry Goldwater  it would lead to a U.S. involvement in an Asian land war that would result in the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops.  Well,  I voted for Barry  Goldwater and sure enough, the U.S. was involved in an Asian land war that lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, merjet said:

He laughs at the deaths of thousands of American troops. He is truly sick in the head.

He laughed at the humor, not those deaths.

I thought it was funny.

A Special Forces SFC next to me got a bullet between the eyes. A Sp 4 on the same operation got three machine gun bullets in the chest. I escorted the bodies to the morgue at the airbase in Saigon. There was a whole row of marble slabs, but theirs were the only bodies. (1966)

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 10:00 PM, Brant Gaede said:

He laughed at the humor, not those deaths.

I thought it was funny.

A Special Forces SFC next to me got a bullet between the eyes. A Sp 4 on the same operation got three machine gun bullets in the chest. I escorted the bodies to the morgue at the airbase in Saigon. There was a whole row of marble slabs, but theirs were the only bodies. (1966)

--Brant

Would the world be better or different now if we had not gone to war, against The Kaiser, Hitler, North Korea, or North Vietnam? It is speculative to ask but the general libertarian and Christian view is that unless attacked, stay thy hand. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Peter said:

Would the world be better or different now if we had not gone to war, against The Kaiser, Hitler, North Korea, or North Vietnam? It is speculative to ask but the general libertarian and Christian view is that unless attacked, stay thy hand. 

Of course the world would be different--and most people alive today would have never existed.

Christian view?

It wasn't WWI that makes today's world--that's just shorthand. It was the treaty that ended it.

But, if it wasn't for "Peace in Our Time," Hitler's generals might have gotten rid of him. Then what? I dunno.

Great Britain made the 19th C. and the United States the 20th--the first in terms of brains and conserved delimited resources and the second in terms of sheer economic and military power--a horse rode by the Brits less and less successfully until Eisenhower told them to get the fuck off.

It's impossible to say the world would be better or worse for this or that major war event. But the world could become a hell of a lot worse for several different reasons. The worst possible would be the frying of unhardened electronics via a modern Carrington Event. Los Angeles could be indefinitely out of fresh water with no relief in sight. The more dependent we are on these electronics the more fragile the country if not the world. The third world could become the first world if the first world becomes no world.

Etc.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now