Vietnam - A Television History
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Actor: Everett Alvarez, George Ball (II), Herbert Bluechel, J. Lawton Collins, William Colby (II)Brand: Wgbh Wholesale
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Unknown; English (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 660 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: PBS
Product features:
- A six-year project from conception to completion, this eleven-hour DVD collection carefully analyzes the costs and consequences of this controversial but intriguing war. From the first episode to the last, it provides a detailed visual and oral account of the war that changed a generation and continues to color American thinking on many military and foreign policy issues Format: DVD MOVIE Gen
DVD Reviews of Vietnam - A Television History
DVD Review: Radical Left Pro-Communist Propaganda
Summary: 1 Stars
In the 1980s when I first viewed this PBS series, from Boston's very liberal WGBH and produced/directed by a well-known leftist, I was somewhat ambivalent about it, not fully comfortable with its presentation, but unable to put my finger on what bothered me about it. Today, some 15 years older and wiser, having studied history in some detail and being aware of Communism's 100 million victims during the 20th Century, I decided to take a fresh look. I purchased the series on VHS videotape through eBay, as the DVD version was not then available -- which was a good thing as those videotapes preserved a lot of stuff which was NOT transferred to the DVD version.
Notably, at the time of the first VHS release, there was some protest against the PBS "documentary", claims that it was highly biased towards the Vietnamese communists, and so the producers added short notes at the end of the videotapes, indicating where one might find those sources of contrary opinion, and rebuttals to the PBS series. Those important end-notes have vanished from the DVD version, which I subsequently purchased to have a better quality reproduction for my historical archive. The DVD version will therefore leave the viewer with the false impression there never was such a loud howl of protest as actually happened. So I will repeat here several of the more important corrective end-notes, as have been censored off the DVD version, and to which the intelligent reviewer will naturally want to consult.
Firstly and foremost, there is the book "Losers Are Pirates" edited by James Banerian, with contributions from "Vietnamese refugees living in the USA". This book goes through the PBS "Vietnam TV History" series, section by section, stripping away its phoney objectivity, revealing the lies and half-truths, and more seriously the Lies Of Omission (the worst kind of lie, as Orwell noted). For specific example, the PBS-WGBH series hardly informs the viewer of the vast evidence of Ho Chi Minh's deep commitment to Red Fascism, his years of study with communist cells in Paris, and later in Moscow and Beijing. Nor does it educate about Ho's assassination program , which he participated in and later led after his return to Vietnam, during the chaotic years of French colonial rule, exterminating most of the pro-Vietnamese nationalist leaders who held democratic sentiments. Ho wanted a communist totalitarian state from the get-go, but none of the documentation on that is ever presented. Instead, Ho is falsely misportrayed as a "Vietnamese Nationalist", even as he was guilty of assassinating nationalist leaders. Not to blame American leftists entirely, this was the cover story fabricated by the Vietnamese communists themselves. Capitalizing on legitimate Vietnamese nationalist fervor, Ho Chi Minh created a gigantic illusion and lie about himself and his motivations, leading his people into a communist nightmare, leaving behind a trail of corpses, complete with "land reform" programs which basically turned all colonial lands into state lands, abandoning the peasants except to forcibly organize them into communist agricultural communes, complete with thought-control, neighborhood spy systems, village level "people's trials", and with the inevitable firing squads. Mass graves began to fill in Northern Vietnamese regions controlled by the communists, with anyone who dared to object, including whole families who tried to flee to French-held non-communist territory.
None of this is detailed in the series, however. Similarly not described, the repeated communist violations of treaty agreements made with the "capitalist enemy" of the south -- the Geneva Accords, the Paris Accords, and minor truces of all sorts -- were nearly immediately violated by the North Vietnamese, and their created Viet Cong cadres in the South. The evidence for the Viet Cong being fabricated, controlled and by the North Vietnamese communists also is never detailed. While many discontented Vietnamese nationalists joined the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, often as not, after being exposed to their propaganda and methods, the flow of desertions in the other direction was just as brisk. But none of the testimony from Vietnamese officials or citizens on this important issue is revealed. No hint of dissention on such issues ever appears, which are nearly uniformly cast as "fact" purely on the basis of testimony or claims from communist sources -- revealing how the PBS producers were NOT interested in objetivity, presenting both sides, but only that which would support the communists, and misportray the French and USA as villans. Likewise, the NVA/VC terrorism in South Vietnam always exceeded, by perhaps a factor of 10, anything ever done by the USA during Operation Phoenix. Viet Cong massacres of entire families of South Vietnamese officials, with public beheadings and disembowlments in the nature of the Fallujah criminals, are never mentioned, even though this was a major terror tactic of the Viet Cong -- and one of the pre-existing factors which led to the creation of Operation Phoenix, which aimed to assassinate Viet Cong leaders. Likewise, the massacre at Hue -- where NVA and VC forces executed something between 3-5000 civilians in cold blood -- is but one of many similar examples which are glossed over in the Vietnam TV History series. Old communist thugs, sneering with pride at their butchery, are interviewed in such cases, without identifying who they really are, and it is misportrayed as if "ordinary civilians" are being interviewed, rather than high-up communist party officials, or spies who lived in Hue only to emerge after the NVA forces took over, helping after to "round up" the government workers and their families who would be shot in the head and dumped into pits in the jungle. And so on. "Losers Are Pirates" is filled with documentation and eye-witness testimony on the events NOT covered in this phoney PBS "TV history", which was a heart-break for all the refugees who survived the nightmare of communist aggression in SE Asia.
Events DURING and AFTER the fall of South Vietnam are likewise obliterated from open discussion. For example, the full-scale NVA invasion (who were fully equipped with Soviet and Chinese tanks, artillery, troops, etc., in total violation once again of every treaty agreement) are NOT covered in the DVD version, supporting the overall lie that a communist victory was inevitable, and no treaty violation was worth to mention if that violation brought the communists closer to power. In fact, the entire last segment of the PBS series, titled "Legacies" which appeared in the VHS version, is NOT repeated on the DVD version. Why would the PBS-WGBH producers leave out an entire segment of the original production? Because "Legacies" was produced late in the series, after the first segments had been shown on USA television and after those segments had triggered the legitimate outrage from so many American military and Vietnamese refugees, who had lived through all those terrible events, and knew what was being lied about, and omitted. So, "Legacies" was created to present at least some of the "dark side" of the communist victory. It detailed some aspects of the miserable Boat People, hundreds of thousands of "liberated" Vietnamese risking death on the high seas just to escape the communist paradise. You can still buy "Legacies" on VHS, separately, but even this small begrudging admission of communist crimes (white-washed as they were in "Legacies") was "too much" for PBS to include today. "Legacies" also details the communist genocide in Cambodia -- sort of -- like Noam Chomsky, they cannot quite bring themselves to admit that millions were massacred by the communists, and of course they try to blame it all on the USA, even though it was communists who were pulling the triggers, and strangling victims in every case.
The facts of Pol Pot's totally communist origins, his links to the Vietnamese communists and hence to Moscow and Beijing, is again glossed over and distorted, with emphasis placed on his much later disagreements and power-struggles with fellow Vietnamese communists. Likewise, Sianouk's hate for democratic America, and love of the dictatorial communists is totally ignored. Even "Legacies" fails to mention such "small details" as the tens of thousands of ordinary Vietnamese who were slaughtered during the last months of the war, in Vietnam, being deliberately machine-gunned and pounded by artillery as they fled along narrow roads leading south, away from the advancing NVA military. The "Highway of Terror", where one had to carefully step over the corpses of women and children scattered mile after mile along the roads -- perhaps 50,000 dead civilians within a few days... but really, the photos of that atrocity are buried in North Vietnamese archives, never released to the public. Much easier to point to Mai Lai. But... this is "ancient history", and nobody wants to hear it today.
Vietnam TV History instead displays numerous interviews with self-righteous communist cadres and old war-criminal Vietnamese generals, who give their "heroic" side of things, always with the smear against the USA and French, and distortion of fact and events -- as if only North Americans are liars, while Vietnamese communists can always be trusted to tell the truth -- but the producers don't even make the slightest attempt to counter their bald propaganda by interviews with non-communist Vietnamese leaders, or by US generals or troops, except in ways that are calculated to make them appear as evil, stupid, cowardly, sadistic, and so forth. No such prejudicial treatment is afforded to the communists, however! Even the occasional racist or rapacious statement by a communist official is translated into English so as to "tone it down", always to make them appear as "rational", "feeling", "knowledgable" and "honest". Only native Vietnamese-speakers will pick up on this, which is where "Losers Are Pirates" educates. Exactly the opposite treatment is given by the PBS directors to American and South Vietnamese officials.
The producers even use old East German and NVA propaganda movies, without identifying them as such, as if they are "real" battle-scenes! And of course, how heroic the VC and NVA appear -- one never hears Ho Chi Minh roaring that "he" would willingly sacrifice the entire generation of Vietnamese Youth, and fight for 20 or 30 years if necessary, to secure a Red Fascist communist paradise., much as Hitler or Stalin screeched from their podiums, nor do we see any quotes from Chairman Ho praising Stalin and his cruel methods. And one also never hears much about Laos, which was gobbled up by the Vietnamese communists, nor about the very many good things of South Vietnam -- its chaotic but vital democracy, the freedom of speech and of the press which existed, the higher GNP, food production, standard of living, etc., etc., which they held over the communist North... all that is distorted as well, as the South Vietnamese are misportrayed as drug-pushers, prostitutes, parasites living off American military encampments, secretly sympathetic to the communists, and cowards on the battlefield. One wonders why the Tet offensive failed so miserably, as NOT ONE South Vietnamese city rose up to join the communist forces against the Americans -- perhaps because the VC during Tet had the bad habit of shooting rockets and mortar shells into residential neighborhoods of the cities they wanted to "liberate"? -- and even after the fall of the South, so many Vietnamese took to boats or fled on foot, to escape what everyone knew was coming when the communists took over. Many died in the escape attempts, and others who were caught trying to escape also faced death. Death camps (excuse me, "re-education camps"), totalitarianism, controls over press, speech, thinking, actions, work, neighborhood spys, restrictions on travel, listening to foreign radio, etc., etc. "Vietnam TV History" mentions nothing of any of this. Any wonder why ordinary Vietnamese often behave so friendly towards Americans who visit Vietnam?
Ho Chi Minh is always misportrayed as a gentle old fellow, loving of his countrymen, in his heart wanting a Jeffersonian democracy for Vietnam, but thwarted by those mean old Americans --- one wonders how it went so wrong, how Cambodia slipped into genocidal butchery, and so forth with so many well-intentioned enlightened communists being in control, and all the evil capitalist being driven out. Of course, this is balderdash, and the butchery which gripped SE Asia after the fall of non-communist South Vietnam is totally the responsibility of the victorious communist forces, who after the war could have shaped events however they wished. And they did, which is why genocidal butchery occurred! That is what they wanted! History shows, that is fairly standard practice whenever communists take over.
Another rebuttal documentary is the VHS production "Television's Vietnam: The Real Story" and "Televisions's Vietnam: The Impact of the Media", which detail how our major news figures -- such as Walter Cronkite -- basically repeated the communist propaganda, helping to seal the fate of the South Vietnamese. Don't believe it? Get these documentaries and judge for yourself. Both are available on a single VHS casette from Accuracy In Media www.aim.org. This VHS, and the "Legacies" VHS, and the "Losers Are Pirates" book are necessary reading, assuming you want the facts.
Don't take my word for anything, but don't believe the "standard lies" of the left-wing on this subject either. Educate yourself, by reading the penetrating analysis as given in these rebuttals. Dig deeper than the shallow propaganda presented in this PBS series. That is, assuming fact and truth hold meaning for you. For the producers of this PBS series, fact and truth meant nothing.
Description of Vietnam - A Television History
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