OMNI
VIETNAM WAR
NEWSLETTER #9,
September 16,
2017.
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1 July 24, 2011; #2 June 9, 2012; #3 Sept.
25, 2012; #4 April 13, 2013; #5, April 9, 2014; #6, Feb. 18, 2015; #7, March
24, 2015; #8, March 20, 2017). Thanks to
Marc.
THE 10-PART BURNS/NOVICK SERIES ON PBS BEGINS SEPTEMBER 21
PREVIEW THIS SATURDAY TOMORROW SEPT. 16 AT FPL, 2:00 PM. Free screening of one episode, followed by a panel
moderated by Kyle Kellams; panelists: Veterans History Project director Col. Karen
Lloyd, former NYT journalist and UA
professor Roy Reed, John Brown U professor Preston Jones, and VNW veteran Jim
Hale. From Lara Hightower, “Filmmaker
Tells Story of War” (NADG Sept. 14,
2017).
For an overview of the Burns/Novick series see Michael Storey,
“10-Part Burns Documentary Recalls Vietnam War” NADG (Sept. 14, 2017).
Contexts
Killing civilians google search
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...civilians.../gIQALCO4eP_story.html
This inattention to civilian deaths in America's
wars isn't unique to Iraq. There's little evidence that the American public
gives much thought to ...
https://www.thenation.com/.../trumps-policy-is-clear-civilian-casualties-dont-matter-in-th...
Recent news reports
describe a massive increase in civilian casualties at the hands of the US military or US allies.
In Mosul, Iraq, hundreds of ...
US westward imperialism
US
WESTWARD/EASTWARD GLOBAL EMPIRE ENCIRCLING RUSSIA AND CHINA, OMNI NEW SERIES NEWSLETTER # 35, November
22, 2016.
Contents: Vietnam War Newsletter #9, September 15, 2017.
VIETNAM WAR FULL DISCLOSURE
This year marks the 50th
anniversary of the landing of U.S. ground troops in Da Nang, Vietnam.
Many consider this to be the beginning of the American War in Vietnam. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war
the Pentagon is undertaking a ten-year, $65-million campaign to rewrite and
whitewash the history of the war in Southeast Asia.
In response, Veterans for Peace has announced the Vietnam War Full Disclosure project to offer a more truthful history of the war. <More>
For more information, email Doug Rawlings @Rawlings@maine.edu or visit the Full Disclosure Campaign website.
In response, Veterans for Peace has announced the Vietnam War Full Disclosure project to offer a more truthful history of the war. <More>
For more information, email Doug Rawlings @Rawlings@maine.edu or visit the Full Disclosure Campaign website.
The Vietnamese
Experience
Memoir by Linda Baer
Photographic
Record
Official Account vs.
Critiques and Alternatives for Truth and
Peace, Anti-War Peace Movement
Peace, Anti-War Peace Movement
Pentagon Exhibit
Anniversary
Tom
Hayden, Hell No!
Rep. Barbara Lee’s Resolution
Public Opposition
Book:
Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks
Citizen
Resisters, Conscientious Objectors
Dancis,
Resister, reviewed by Murray Polner
GI
Opposition to the War
Seidman, “Vietnam
and the Soldiers’ Revolt”
The War
Continues
“Bob Kerrey, Fulbright University, and
Neoliberal Erasure of
History” by Paul Street
History” by Paul Street
History, Appraisal, and
Experience of the US War
Full Disclosure
Appy, American Reckoning rev. by Staughton Lynd
(also see
Newsletter #8).
Newsletter #8).
Willson, My Lai
Rawlings, What Does It Mean?
Ehrhart, “A Personal History”
Marciano, “Lessons from the Vietnam War”
Weiner, Book on Nixon, the War, and
Watergate
Bingham, Book Witness to the Revolution, Oral History 1969-70.
The
Vietnamese Experience
Dick,
thanks for this newsletter [#8}. The latest book that I have read about Viet
Nam is Red Blood, Yellow Skin by Linda
L.T. Baer. She
was born in North Viet Nam, migrated to South, then later married an American
soldier and moved to the US. She experienced more tragedy in her first 10 years
of life than most people do in a lifetime. Hers is one story of what a lot of
Vietnamese experienced during those years.
Cliff M
“Another Vietnam, 1965-1975:
Unseen Images of the War from the Winning Side.” ASIA & THE PACIFIC, 24
April 2017.
Alex Q. Arbuckle |
Mashable – TRANSCEND Media Service.
1972: Activists meet in
the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in
case of capture and interrogation. From here in the mangrove swamps of the
Mekong Delta, forwarding images to the North was difficult. “Sometimes the
photos were lost or confiscated on the way,” said the photographer.Image: Vo Anh Khanh/Another Vietnam/National Geographic Books
For much of the world, the visual history of the Vietnam War has
been defined by a handful of iconic photographs: Eddie Adams’ image of a Viet
Cong fighter being executed, Nick Ut’s picture of nine-year-old Kim Phúc
fleeing a napalm strike, Malcolm Browne’s photo of Thích Quang Duc
self-immolating in a Saigon intersection.
Many famous images of the war were taken by Western
photographers and news agencies, working alongside American or South Vietnamese
troops.
But the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had hundreds of
photographers of their own, who documented every facet of the war under the
most dangerous conditions.
Almost all were self-taught, and worked for the Vietnam News
Agency, the National Liberation Front, the North Vietnamese Army or various
newspapers. Many sent in their film anonymously or under a nom de guerre,
viewing themselves as a humble part of a larger struggle.
July
1967: New recruits undergo physical examinations in Haiphong. The North’s
volunteer system was transformed into a mandatory system in 1973, when all
able-bodied males were drafted. From a corps of around 35,000 men in 1950, the
NVA grew to over half a million men by the mid-’70s, a force the U.S. military
conceded was one of the finest in the world.
Image: Bao Hanh/Another Vietnam/National Geographic Books
Image: Bao Hanh/Another Vietnam/National Geographic Books
Sept. 15,
1970: A victim of American bombing, ethnic Cambodian guerrilla Danh Son Huol is
carried to an improvised operating room in a mangrove swamp on the Ca Mau
Peninsula. This scene was an actual medical situation, not a publicity setup.
The photographer, however, considered the image unexceptional and never printed
it.
Image: Vo Anh Khanh/Another Vietnam/National Geographic Books
Image: Vo Anh Khanh/Another Vietnam/National Geographic Books
Official Story of the War vs. Alternative Peace Accounts
RECENT
PENTAGON OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF THE WAR
fortcampbellcourier.com/news/article_8a659fd8-c88c-11e6-a87d-f7e5dd877ead.html
Dec 22, 2016 - Pentagon's new exhibit
commemorates Vietnam War ... other Pentagon officials for the official ribbon cutting of the display, which spans a
swath ...
https://www.defense.gov/News/.../pentagons-newest-exhibit-commemorates-50th-anni...
Dec 20, 2016 - Vietnam veteran and former
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel returned ... Pentagon's Newest Exhibit Commemorates
50th Anniversary of Vietnam War ... and other Pentagon officials for theofficial ribbon cutting of
the display, ...
CRITIQUES
OF THE OFFICIAL STORY
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/.../vietnam-50th-anniversary-pentagon-timeline.html
Jul 26, 2016 - Paying Respects, Pentagon Revives Vietnam, and War Over Truth OCT. ...
what they called incorrect accounts of war crimes, government cover-ups and ... Pentagon officials said they
hoped that a new version of the timeline, ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../we-were-already-in-vietnam-before-65-nows-the-...
Apr 27, 2015 - Our collective failure to
properly mark the real start of the Vietnam war ... Vietnam War as the official, authorized 50th anniversary
ceremonies begin in earnest. ... The Pentagon is expected to spend up to millions for
anniversary-related ... and Their Early Vietnam Battles, Prochnau's excellentaccount of the ...
Anti-War
Peace Movement
Tom Hayden, Hell No!
Hell No review: celebration of Vietnam protests can inform resistance
to Trump.
A new book
by Tom Hayden, the peace movement leader who died in October, is a posthumous
call for recognition that has much to say to those who march today
Rev. by Clara Bingham
Sunday 12 February
2017 07.00 ESTLast modified on Friday 14 July 2017 13.41 EDT
Tom Hayden’s death, in late October at the age of 76, could not
have been more untimely. The 60s protest leader missed by just three months the
dawn of a new US mass movement, the likes of which we
have not seen since Hayden led the charge against the Johnson and Nixon
administrations’ relentless escalation of the Vietnam war.
If it’s
any consolation, his sage voice lives on in a posthumously published
book, Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement.
Indeed, for the same reasons that Hayden’s death was untimely, his book could
not be more timely. Millions are taking to cities, airports and town halls
across the US and around the world, protesting against the Trump
administration and its policies.
MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/12/hell-no-review-tom-hayden-vietnam-protests-trump-resistance
The Vietnam War Peace
Movement: See #8
Tom Hayden, Hell
No (2017, published shortly before he died)
John Marciano, The American War in Vietnam (2016).
Rep. Lee Recognizes
Vietnam Peace Movement in House Resolution.
Rep. Barbara
Lee and several notable activists lead the Vietnam Power of Protest
commemorative march in Washington D.C. May 2015.
Rep. Barbara
Lee has introduced a House Resolution (H.Res.695) recognizing the Vietnam anti-war movement as, "one
of the largest and most prolonged efforts to achieve peace and justice in
recent generations and was critical to bringing an end to the war." Rep.
John Conyers became a co-sponsor as an effort begins to seek endorsements from
other congressional representatives.
The Lee
resolution is a direct result of last year's May 1-2 commemoration of the
movement at a conference in Washington DC.
The peace
resolution will draw the ire of Republicans and reluctance of some Democrats.
The Vietnam peace movement is the only Sixties movement that has been
marginalized instead of memorialized. Yet it was a life-changing experience for
many during the war, including thousands of soldiers and veterans, and the US
government has tried to stamp out what they call "the Vietnam
Syndrome."
The Lee
Resolution is an organizing tool for anyone wanting to respond to the
Pentagon's recent false narrative of history on its website. If grass-roots
organizers visit, engage and petition their congressional offices, there is a
strong chance for reinvigorating the continuing debate over Vietnam.
Click here to
read Rep. Lee's House Resolution... http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org/index.php/barbara-lee-recognizes-vietnam-peace- movement-house-resolution/
Commentary
tomhayden.com/index.html?currentPage=2
Apr 21, 2016 - Rep. Barbara Lee has introduced
a House
Resolution (H.Res.695) recognizing theVietnam anti-war movement as, “one of the
largest and most prolonged efforts to achieve peace and justice in
recent generations and was critical to bringing an end to the war.”
https://www.thenation.com/.../the-forgotten-power-of-the-vietnam-peace-movement/
Jan 5, 2017 - The Forgotten Power of
the Vietnam
Peace Movement .... by exposing the deliberate and long-standing practice
of the White House and the Pentagon to ... Many players—members of Congress,
including Barbara Lee, Jim McGovern, and ... Earlier struggles for workers' rights in
the 1930s were recognized, ...
Public Opposition to the War
Book
Review: Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks
Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks:
The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory, by
Penny Lewis. Cornell University Press, 2013.
Lazy journalists and pundits
repeated the story over and over, and made it stand in for every sentiment,
every action of a working-class person about the Vietnam War: In May 1970,
construction workers chanting “love it or leave it” attacked antiwar protesters
on Wall Street. (Seldom mentioned is the fact that hundreds of Wall Street
types joined in, too.)
In the two weeks that followed, workers marched daily at lunchtime,
climaxing with an “Honor America, Honor the Flag” rally organized by the
Building Trades Council. Liberal Mayor John Lindsay was a prime target. The New York Times reported that many demonstrators said
they were fed up with the peace movement.
We can thank Penny Lewis, who
teaches labor studies in New York, for showing us that this well-cultivated
image of the hardhat hawk is only one part of the story of working-class
opinion and activity about Vietnam.
In Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth
and Memory, she asks, “Who opposed the war? Who took part in
actions either directly or indirectly against the war? Who caused the greatest
disruption to the US capacity to fight in Vietnam?” and makes the case that
“working people were at the forefront.”
MORE http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2014/07/book-review-hardhats-hippies-and-hawks
GI Opposition
to the War
“Vietnam
and the Soldiers’ Revolt: The
Politics of a Forgotten History” by Derek Seidman. Monthly Review. Home › 2016 › Volume
68, Issue 02 (June) › Vietnam and the Soldiers’ Revolt
Dear Reader, we make this and other articles available for free
online to serve those unable to afford or access the print edition of Monthly Review. If you read the magazine online and can
afford a print subscription, we hope you will consider purchasing one. Please
visit the MR store for subscription options. Thank you very
much. —Eds.
Derek Seidman is an assistant professor of history at
D’Youville College in Buffalo. He is writing a book about the history of GI
protest during the Vietnam War.
This
article is part of an MR series on
the 50th anniversary of the U.S. war in Vietnam.
It
has been nearly fifty years since the height of the Vietnam War—or, as it is
known in Vietnam, the American War—and yet its memory continues to loom large
over U.S. politics, culture, and foreign policy. The battle to define the war’s
lessons and legacies has been a proxy for larger clashes over domestic
politics, national identity, and U.S. global power. One of its most debated
areas has been the mass antiwar movement that achieved its greatest heights in
the United States but also operated globally. Within this, and for the antiwar
left especially, a major point of interest has been the history of soldier
protest during the war. This interest grew with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when
both dissident soldiers and antiwar civilians looked back to the legacy of
Vietnam-era GI resistance as a usable history to help oppose the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. David Cortright’s classic 1975 account of troop
resistance, Soldiers in Revolt, was republished
in 2005, and that same year, the documentary film Sir! No Sir! helped to popularize the hidden
history of active-duty soldier protest.
MORE https://monthlyreview.org/2016/06/01/vietnam-and-the-soldiers-revolt/
Citizen
Resisters, Conscientious Objectors
Review of Bruce Dancis’s “Resister: A Story
of Protest and Prison During the Vietnam War”
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/155688
May 18, 2014.
May 18, 2014.
Murray Polner a, regular book
reviewer for HNN, wrote “No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran”
and co-authored, with Jim O’Grady, “Disarmed and Dangerous,” a biography of
Daniel and Philip Berrigan.”
“On December 14, 1966, at the age of eighteen,
I stood before a crowd of three hundred people at Cornell University, read a
statement denouncing the war and the draft, and tore my draft card unto four
pieces.” Bruce Dancis, a college freshman, then dramatically walked to a
mailbox and sent the mutilated card to his draft board. He was the first
Cornell student to do so. “I made a stand against the war and the draft. I
became part of a tiny minority of young men ---an estimated three thousand—who
went to federal prison instead.”
Resister, Bruce Dancis’s absorbing portrayal of the tumultuous sixties
from his vantage point as leader of Cornell’s Student for a Democratic Society,
describes what it was like to challenge the world’s most powerful nation in the
midst of a war that saw millions of Asians and 58,000 U.S. troops die, a failed
war for which no-one at the highest level of our government has ever been held
accountable.
The War Continues
Bob Kerrey, Fulbright University
and the Neoliberal Erasure of History By Paul Street September
26, 2016
Truth is stranger than dystopian fiction. Last May, for example, United States President Barack Obama announced the opening of the U.S.-sponsored Fulbright University of Vietnam (FUV), the first private university in a small nation the U.S. tried to “bomb back to the Stone Age” half a century ago. Intended to be “a U.S.-style university not under control of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” FUV hopes to begin teaching students about how to be good global-era capitalists and world capitalist citizens in the fall of 2017. It’s a collaboration between the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the U.S. State Department. The U.S. government has so far invested roughly $20 million in the project.
Truth is stranger than dystopian fiction. Last May, for example, United States President Barack Obama announced the opening of the U.S.-sponsored Fulbright University of Vietnam (FUV), the first private university in a small nation the U.S. tried to “bomb back to the Stone Age” half a century ago. Intended to be “a U.S.-style university not under control of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” FUV hopes to begin teaching students about how to be good global-era capitalists and world capitalist citizens in the fall of 2017. It’s a collaboration between the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the U.S. State Department. The U.S. government has so far invested roughly $20 million in the project.
Bronze
Star Butcher MORE (Bob Kerrey, CIA, massacres, Obama, Harvard,
Fulbright University of Vietnam, US exceptionalism and supremacism, official amnesia,
moral blindness) https://zcomm.org/zmagazine/bob-kerrey-fulbright-university-and-the-neoliberal-erasure-of-history/
Paul Street is an author and activist in Iowa City.
This essay originally appeared in Counterpunch.
Two articles
from Monthly Review (December 2016) under the heading of
“Vietnam War Revisited,” accompanied by this note: “This and the following article are
part of a continuing MR series on the
legacy of the U.S. War in Vietnam.”
W. D. Ehrhart. “Vietnam and the Sixties: A Personal
History.” Monthly Review (December 2016).
http://monthlyreview.org/2016/12/01/vietnam-and-the-sixties/
John Marciano, “Lessons from the
Vietnam War.” Monthly Review (December 2016).
Adapted from the author’s The
American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration? Monthly Review P, 2016. http://monthlyreview.org/2016/12/01/lessons-from-the-vietnam-war/
History, Appraisal, and Experience of the US War
About Full Disclosure
By Howard Machtinger
On May 25, 2012, in announcing a 13-year long commemoration of
the war in Viet Nam funded by Congress at $65 million, President Obama
proclaimed:
“As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn
reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute
to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to
serve bravely, a world away… They pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat
and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as
Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these
proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces.”[i]
Commemorations are acts of choosing what to remember about
something presumably of significance. There are two parts to this:
1.
creating a memory which is inevitably a direction to remember
some things rather than others; a memory with a purpose; ostensibly to honor
and thereby define honor for some future purpose;
2.
defining some event as significant: making a major contribution
to our world, a turning point.
So I will try to make an argument for the significance of the
war and point at what I think ought to be remembered which will diverge from
hyperbolic salutations of soldierly valor – though valor there was — to
something more substantive. It will end up at cross purposes to Obama’s, I
fear.
So let me develop an argument at three levels:
1.
the war’s impact on the U.S.;
2.
its impact on Vietnamese;
3.
its impact on the world.
American Exceptionalism, Working-Class Wars, and Working-Class
Peace Movements by Staughton Lynd. Monthly Review April 2015. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/lynd180215.html
Christian Appy.
American
Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity.
New York: Viking, 2015.
Christian Appy is
the author of two splendid previous books about the Vietnam War: Working-Class
War and Patriots.
Patriots was extraordinary in that it offered oral histories by
soldiers on both sides of the conflict. The main argument of Appy's new
book, American Reckoning, is that "the Vietnam War shattered
the central tenet of American national identity," namely, faith in
"American exceptionalism."
MORE http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/lynd180215.html
Staughton Lynd is an American conscientious objector and tax
resister, Quaker, peace activist and civil rights activist, historian and
professor, author and lawyer. His book Doing History
from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor
Movement from Below was published in December 2014 by
Haymarket Books and a new edition of his Solidarity
Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below, with an
introduction by radical labor scholar and activist Immanuel Ness, will be
published by PM Press in Spring 2015. He can be reached at salynd@aol.com.
S. Brian Willson, “Looking Back at My Lai,” Peace in Our Times, Spring
2015. My Lai 47 Years Later by S. Brian Willson. PUBLISHED
ON: MARCH 24, 2015
This photo [below] was taken
March 16, 1968 at My Lai. I arrived in country a year later on March 8, 1969,
but of course had no idea of My Lai or any of the other massacres and
atrocities occurring. Soon after arrival, however, I would witness the aftermath
of massacres from the air, from 300 feet or less, totally wiping out inhabited,
totally undefended fishing and farming villages burning many of the villagers
to a crisp with napalm. Sometimes I feel as if I am still in shock, unable to
share any expression that is able to convey the utter diabolical nature of it
all, of history from our very beginnings. And yet I knew and was exposed to so
little, just a taste. MORE http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org/index.php/my-lai-47-years-later-by-s-brian-willson/
Photo
Courtesy: Brian Willson
“Don’t Thank Me for My Service” by Doug
Rawlings
PUBLISHED
ON: APRIL 12, 2015
This article originally appeared at theindypendent.org.
U.S.
troops search for an elusive enemy in a war that the American public ultimately
came to reject.
BY DOUG RAWLINGS. APRIL 9, 2015
ISSUE #205
Editor’s Note: Fifty years ago this
spring, the U.S. military deployed combat units in South Vietnam for the first
time. A massive escalation in the war followed — within three years the U.S.
had more than 500,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam. When the war finally
ended on April 30, 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of
Saigon to Communist forces, more than 4 million Vietnamese, Cambodians and
Laotians and 58,000 Americans had died in the conflict.
For militarists here in the United
States, the battle never really ended. They have sought ever since to reframe
Vietnam as a “noble cause” betrayed by antiwar protesters who failed to
appreciate the sacrifices of the troops and who then perpetuated the public’s
aversion to prolonged military adventures in other countries for another
generation before 9/11 opened the door on a new era of overseas wars. Now, the
Pentagon is heading up a 13-year, $65 million campaign to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the war that is slated to run from 2012 to 2025. The Vietnam War
Commemoration Project will see its own massive escalation starting this year on
Memorial Day, as the Pentagon looks to partner with 10,000 corporations and
local groups “to thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War.”
But what does all this unsolicited
gratitude mean to a veteran who has dedicated himself to waging peace in the 45
years since he came home from war? MORE http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org/index.php/dont-thank-me-for-my-service-by-doug-rawlings/
W. D.
Ehrhart. “Vietnam and the Sixties: A
Personal History.” Monthly Review
(December 2016).
http://monthlyreview.org/2016/12/01/vietnam-and-the-sixties/
John
Marciano, “Lessons from the Vietnam War.”
Monthly Review (December
2016). Adapted from the author’s The American War in Vietnam: Crime or
Commemoration? Monthly Review P,
2016. http://monthlyreview.org/2016/12/01/lessons-from-the-vietnam-war/
TIM WEINER, ONE MAN
AGAINST THE WORLD. 2015.
|
Recommended
Reading From The American Empire Proje
|
|||
|
|||
|
"An
eye-opening study of Richard Nixon's booze-soaked, paranoid White House years
and the endless tragedies they wrought...." — Kirkus Reviews, starred
review
|
|||
|
Witness to the Revolution:
RADICALS, RESISTERS, VETS,
HIPPIES, AND THE YEAR AMERICA LOST ITS MIND AND FOUND ITS SOUL By Clara
Bingham. Penguin Random House,
2017. 656 Pages.
The
electrifying story of the turbulent year when the sixties ended and America
teetered on the edge of revolution
From
the publisher:
As
the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the
nation witnessed nine thousand protests and eighty-four acts of arson or
bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre
investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the
War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching fifty thousand, and the
ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American
society. Witness to the Revolution,
Clara Bingham’s unique oral history
of that tumultuous time, unveils anew that moment when America careened to the
brink of a civil war at home, as it fought a long, futile war abroad.
Woven
together from one hundred original interviews, Witness to the Revolution provides a firsthand narrative of that
period of upheaval in the words of those closest to the action—the activists,
organizers, radicals, and resisters who manned the barricades of what Students
for a Democratic Society leader Tom Hayden called “the Great Refusal.” MORE
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/217132/witness-to-the-revolution-by-clara-bingham/9780812983265/
For
a partly critical review see Andy Piaseik in Z Magazine (June 2017), 43-4.
For example, he thinks Bingham spends too much space on the Weather
Underground. --Dick
"The Draft" and "Dick Cavett's Vietnam"; “
'Last Days in
Vietnam,' 'Kent State: The Day the '60s Died' on PBS http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-last-days-vietnam-kent-state-review-20150427-column.html
Rory Kennedy's superb
'Last Days in Vietnam,' on KOCE, deals with Saigon's fall; Robert Lloyd reviews
'Kent State: The Day
the '60s Died,' on KOCE, strives to convey urgency of the moment; a TV review
It has
been 40 years, nearly to the day, since the last helicopter carrying the last
Marines left Saigon. On April 30, 1975, the American presence in Vietnam came
to an end; hours later South Vietnam, surrendering to the North, was itself no
more. . . .
To
mark this anniversary, PBS scheduled a clutch of shows that address the war
from different angles. Monday night saw "The Draft" and "Dick
Cavett's Vietnam," the first a kind of general survey of American
conscription with an emphasis on Vietnam; the second was based, like "Dick
Cavett's Watergate," around interview footage from Cavett's talk shows.
Neither
show quite holds together: "The Draft" raises good questions about
class and the military but too closely associates questions of patriotism with
the willingness to carry a gun, and the Cavett program suffers at times from an
oddly whimsical, almost amused tone that fights the seriousness of the often
fascinating archival clips. "While I set out to do an entertaining talk
show," the host says today, inserting a purposeful chuckle, "you
could not keep Vietnam out of the conversation."
Tuesday's
offerings — "Last Days in Vietnam" and "Kent State: The Day the
'60s Died" — are far better. . . .
Forty
years later, we're still working through it, a necessary enterprise and an
impossible one. Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-last-days-vietnam-kent-state-review-20150427-column.html
Contents:
Vietnam War Newsletter #8, March 20, 2017
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/03/vietnam-war-newsletter-8.html
FULL DISCLOSURE
Telling the Truth About the War vs.
Pentagon/Pres. Obama Official History;
Consequences of the War to US and
Vietnamese Troops and Vietnamese People.
Remembering the War for Peace or for
more wars: Films
Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Coming in
September a 10-Part PBS film series by Lynn Novick and Ken Burns
Two films by
Michael Grigsby on war’s destructive effects on US troops.
Naneek: A US Veteran returns after 40 years, and
meets Vietnamese vets
Histories of the War
Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves (2013)
Christian Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our
National Identify (2015).
National Identify (2015).
Atrocities
Jack Doxie, the 48th Anniversary of My Lai
Nadya Williams, Chuck Searcy: Birth defects of Vietnam's children
Bill Fletcher, Agent Orange
Marjorie Cohn, From Nuclear Bombs to
Agent Orange
The Warriors Who Started the War and Kept it
Going
Kissinger: 2 articles
Vietnam War Part of US History of Global Aggression
“Patriotic Genocide” by Mike Hastie, poet
The
Vietnam War Peace Movement
Tom Hayden, Hell
No (2017, published shortly before he died)
John Marciano, The American War in Vietnam (2016).
END VIETNAM WAR NEWSLETTER #9
No comments:
Post a Comment