Ken Burns has produced another excellent if troubling reflection on a difficult period of our nation’s history many of us still vividly recall: the war in Vietnam. Just as with his prior programs on the Civil War, baseball, and jazz, his thoughtful attention in this series to individual stories and how they fit into the historical narrative helped explain how the Vietnam War happened and how it affected countless people, both in our country and on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. In the process he and his co-director Lynn Novick, created a documentary calculated to help heal some of the wounds left by this tragic and prolonged conflict.
As we watched the eight part series, two key points seemed to stand out:
Yet Burns illustrates how, over and over, our leaders misled the nation about what was actually happening there. From promoting the fear of a communist “domino effect”, to falsified body counts, to Nixon engaging in what LBJ called “treason” by undermining peace talks in 1968 to tilt the presidential election in Nixon’s favor, deception and a measure of treachery occurred frequently.
This repeated breach of faith by America’s leaders sowed seeds of mistrust in government we still suffer from today. Before Vietnam, this didn’t really exist. Now it is a sad fact of life too often compounded by our current leaders.
Fortunately, we did learn from Vietnam that we should never blame our soldiers for the folly of our leaders. The sacrifice made by our young men in Vietnam was as great as in any other war. And they were as deserving of our respect for that sacrifice, even if the cause for which they were required to fight was questionable and prompted more by politics than by principle on the part of our leaders.
Ultimately, the purpose of history should be to teach us lessons so we don’t make the same mistakes again. Series like Ken Burns’ Vietnam help teach these lessons. They also remind us that we need to question our leaders and not blindly follow them, to better assure they don’t lead us down reckless paths again.