Tuesday, September 19, 2017

They Meant Well

I've watched the first two parts of Vietnam, the marathon Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary currently airing and streaming on PBS. Although the reviews have been mixed, I'm waiting to see the entire film before passing final judgment myself.

So far, my main quibble is that at the very beginning of the series, narrator Peter Coyote glibly informs us that the United States originally entered this misbegotten war with only the very best intentions.  My bullshit detector immediately went into high alert.

The footage somewhat confusingly zig-zags between French soldiers behaving badly in the 1950s and American soldiers behaving badly in the 1960s, and Vietnamese soldiers (essentially, all civilians) behaving badly throughout. This serves the purpose of spreading the blame around thinly and internationally, so that no one country or person can ever be held individually accountable for the colossal mess.

Interestingly enough, though, Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader of the north, is portrayed as initially being a good guy and friend of the CIA, but whose outreach to US presidents Truman and Eisenhower was either thwarted or ignored by the State Department, leading him straight into the arms of China. And oh, that Domino Effect, which some of the aging generals and spooks interviewed apparently adhere to right to this very day.

It was something of a jolt to be reminded that journalists in that era were given mostly free rein to document, in both words and pictures, countless bloody images of soldiers behaving both very nobly and very badly. It seems never to have occurred to American leaders to ban reporters from the killing fields, as is the case now. After Iraq and Afghanistan went sour, even film documentation of returning body bags to Joint Base Andrews was banned in an effort to shield American news-consumers from reality.  Our leaders were and still are trying to prevent a recurrence of the Vietnam Syndrome: the absolute loathing of most citizens for any more wars after so many graphic debacles on the nightly news. (The Neocons call this dreaded public aversion to state-sponsored blood and gore our "sickly inhibitions").

President John F. Kennedy is also portrayed as a good guy who only reluctantly sent secret US ground troops to Southeast Asia, and was absolutely appalled when, three weeks before his own assassination, the CIA orchestrated the assassination of South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and his secret police henchman. 

So this got me thinking about the whole Kennedy Camelot myth. And that, in turn, got me thinking about the modern re-creator of the Camelot myth, T.H. White, and his five-part The Once and Future King



A pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II, White wrote much of his opus during the rise and rule of European fascism. His overarching theme dovetails nicely with that of the Ken Burns film: They Meant Well. 

King Arthur surrounded himself with the righteous Knights of the Round Table just as Kennedy surrounded himself with the Best and the Brightest. Their goals were to fight Might with Right. And, as usually happens, the Righties ended up turning into the Mighties. And things began to fall apart, very badly.

I hadn't read White since I was a child, but I picked up the book again right after reading Helen Macdonald's excellent H Is For Hawk, which is a parallel tale of Macdonald dealing with her grief over the death of her father by taming a raptor, and fellow falconer White's struggling against his own sadistic demons  through writing about how hard it is for mankind to be a force for good.

Humans, he acerbically noted, are the only species on earth who kill each other for the sheer, stupid sport of it. 

This isn't to say that other animals can't be every bit as nasty as people. In one chapter in the first volume, The Sword in the Stone, we're regaled with Arthur's (the Wart's) life as an ant, and the insanely vicious rules of ant supremacy and ant oppression:
A. We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash.

B. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash.

C. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one.

D. They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one.

E. We must attack them in self-defense.

F. They are attacking us by defending themselves.

G. If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.

H. In any case we are not attacking them at all. We are offering them incalculable benefits.
The "incalculable benefits" offered to recruits and draftees in the Vietnam War were actually put down on paper by latter-day Camelot Defense Secretary  Robert McNamara. This modern knight in shining armor thought it would be ultra-cool to sell the war to a whole multitude of ants (Project 100,000) in conjunction with LBJ's War on Poverty and the Great Society:
  "The poor of America... have not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this nation's abundance, but they can be given the opportunity to serve in their country's defense and they can be given an opportunity to return to civilian life with skills and aptitudes which for them and their families will reverse the downward spiral of decay."
The best and brightest knights of the Pentagon derisively called them "the Moron Corps" - a disposable group of excess ants offered a one-way ticket to the ant farm. They checked in to the war, and due to their mental and physical disabilities, the few who did manage to escape certainly didn't return to any American dream. So it'll be interesting to see whether this largely forgotten tidbit of history will be included in the Ken Burns version of the Vietnam War. Dear Olde Camelot was the same myth in the '60s as it was in the equally mythical ancient Britain. And so it remains to this very day.

You might remember that the Arthurian legend ended with the banally evil Mordred usurping the throne and regressing the whole world to primordial mayhem just for the sheer, stupid fun of it. There are too many parallels to this cautionary tale in our modern world to even count.

As ever, we seem condemned to repeat (and revise) history, over and over and over again.

8 comments:

annenigma said...

'Vietnam' is gut wrenching to watch but I'm loving it. I too was confused trying to keep track of all the players as they skipped back and forth from North to South, French to American, but I did manage to notice that they subtly glossed over or airbrushed a few things. Pardon my long comment, but here are some of my thoughts about the film so far for anyone caring to read it.

The narrator stated that 'the Generals (of South Vietnam) went to the CIA for help' to overthrow their President. What? Since when does the CIA hang back and wait to be asked for help. Orchestrating coups is their specialty. Are Burns and Novick that naive, or was it the big Koch donation to this film project that portrayed it ass-backwards? Or maybe I'm just being nit-picky.

Showing the American reporter challenging Kennedy to explain how many troops were in Vietnam after discrepancies between Gov't claims and reports on the ground was interesting. Kennedy hemmed and hawed and claimed there were no 'combat troops' there, sounding like Obama claiming there were 'no boots on the ground' in one of his many wars (I forget which one). Good thing the film makers also include a vet saying "We were the last generation of vets to believe our Gov't would never lie to us".

Burns and Novick included a recording of Kennedy recording his regrets, post coup, about 'signing the orders' and specifically mentioned his distress over how the two brothers died (Diem's brother was his closest adviser and thought to be the real power). After obfuscation by the South Vietnamese generals and claims that the (handcuffed) men committed suicide, it was admitted that they were both assassinated, shot in the head as they climbed into a van after being lured by a promise of asylum.

This was just 3 weeks before Kennedy himself was assassinated. The second episode is titled 'Riding the Tiger' and aptly starts with Kennedy's warning at his inauguration: "Remember that in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside". Ouch.

Interestingly, President's Diem wife, a real dragon lady, had been squirreled out of the country to the USA ostensibly for a goodwill tour before the coup and assassinations. Was she on the CIA payroll? I wonder about the convenient timing of her escape to the USA. Blame for the killings were pinned on General Minh of course, not the CIA.

I hope Burns and Novick include something about our economic interests in fighting that war. Certainly it wasn't about freedom and democracy for the Vietnamese. Keeping Communism from threatening the freedom of Capitalist exploitation is more likely, and war profiteering of course. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense for 8 years under Kennedy and Johnson, didn't leave his job as President of Ford Motor Co. shortly after getting it just to nobly 'serve his country' as the film makers would have us believe.

I look forward to watching future episodes. I hope they don't raise that tired trope about Vietnam vets being spat on by hippies but I bet they do.

Uncle Ho said...

"Our leaders were and still are trying to prevent a recurrence of the Vietnam Syndrome: the absolute loathing of most citizens for any more wars after so many graphic debacles on the nightly news."

So the Vietnam Syndrome is citizens loathing graphic debacles on nightly news?

Disagree. It was the draft and 57,000+ American body bags containing the citizens’ dead husbands, dead fathers, dead brothers, and dead sons.

Now with an all volunteer military, most citizens know they can simply change the channel to avoid graphic debacles on the nightly news - for the few who even watch the nightly news anymore. (mostly old folks).

The typical American citizen today does not care about the graphic debacles of war. The military is all volunteer, so they signed up to die; and killing the black and brown enemy keeps us safe at home in America.

Pearl said...



The Fog of War
Documentary

Former corporate whiz kid Robert McNamara was the controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, during the height of the Vietnam War. This Academy Award-winning documentary, augmented by archival footage, gives the conflicted McNamara a platform on which he attempts to confront his and the U.S. government's actions in Southeast Asia in light of the horrors of modern warfare, the end of ideology and the punitive judgment of history.

Release date: February 6, 2004

One of the best documentaries I have ever seen.

Jay–Ottawa said...

The All Volunteer Army was a brilliant idea that made the Vietnam Syndrome go 'poof.' Why? Because the AVA has something in it for everybody.

The Pentagon––give me your young, your poor, your ignorant, your unemployed––got its fodder: kids who don't talk back, much less frag gung ho 2nd lieutenants. Support our troops.

Draft cards were out. Nothing left for the Berrigans to burn. No longer was a representative cross section of America involved in the Pentagon's debacles. Most Americans, of draft age or not, were suddenly cured of their antiwar fever. (The antiwar movement was never more than 95% skin and 5% soul.) The principled who still complain are so few they're invisible. Coffin deliveries went mostly to small, unrepresentative, powerless segments of the population in rural areas. See, journalists do not follow the rule of "If it bleeds, it leads." Support our troops.

The fodder were suckered in by promises of skills, adventure, manly medals, GI bills to follow and even citizenship. And the cost of a carton of Marlboros at the PX is unbelievable. Support our troops.

Women were allowed into combat roles to make up for recruiting shortfalls. There was opposition to that idea by moralistic old fogies, but, hey, if it's not gonna be your daughter, sister, wife, who cares? Join up. Now you got it, baby, equal pay for equal work. Pardon the side effects from testosterone. Support our troops.

Churches and temples take less flack today for standing the stars and stripes to one side of the altar. When was the last time you heard a bishop, a minister, an imam or a rabbi rail against the military before a congregation?

With the world available as a firing range for our drones and sharpshooters from land, sea and air, weapons makers are enjoying an endless boom. Support our troops.

Car drivers in the USA continue to get the cheapest gas on the market anywhere, thanks to America's keeping the sea lanes open and the oil spigots flowing. Support our troops.

Corporate leaders can go anywhere they please around the globe to make money. Support our troops.

Professional football got its own air force to kick off big games with thunderous flyovers. What precision, what noise! Dread and circuses. And now, ladies and gentlemen, please stand for our national anthem. Support our troops.

Finally, thanks to the AVA, Commanders-in-Chief are able to fulfill their duty as policemen of the world. Through ever ready war they maintain the empire's Pax Americana, for which all other civilized countries are grateful. The troops can also be used as a distraction, as political needs dictate, to unite the nation behind the big man who begins to slide in the polls. Support our troops.

Kat said...

"...sometimes squalid ghettos of their external environment that
has debilitated them—but an internal and more destructive
ghetto of personal disillusionment and despair: a ghetto of
the human spirit"
Ah yes,that is the root problem-- personal disillusionment and despair not the "sometimes" squalid ghettos of their external environment.
And what a better way to escape this personal disillusionment than to travel to a foreign land, help destroy the countryside, and force peasants off the land and into the ghettos of refugee camps and urban slums?

Anonymous said...

In law school, I met a man who had been a Captain in the US Army, assigned for two years to a single Vietnamese village. Two years meant he'd volunteered to stay.

His account was that he meant well, some people like him meant well, but that the whole venture was unfriendly to those Americans who were well-meaning. He felt he was fought and frustrated at every turn by people who had entirely different priorities, not at all clear to him except they were nuts.

There were a lot of Americans there with many individual motives. The people who sent them, the people in charge, were not well meaning with any meaning for Vietnamese people, according to people who were there and who ought to have known.

Kris said...

Hi Karen,

I have to make a small confession about my last (that was also my first) comment.
To be completely honest with myself, when comparing your commenters to yourself, I need to replace the 'almost' with 'very probably' and, for the confession to be full, add that, for at least one of them, I believe even the 'very probably' is not needed.
There, I feel better now. And, I am pretty sure, you agree with me and feel good about it.
I only hope that I am wrong doubting that part of the public might not fully appreciate and enjoy the quality of this blog.






Karen Garcia said...

@Kris,

What the NY Times readers have observed regarding that site - that the comments are often better than the articles themselves - holds just as true here. I am really honored to have such a fine group of commenters, many of whom have been participating for the nearly seven years that this blog has been in existence. One of them, Jay-Ottawa, actually is the person who encouraged me to start my own blog after reading my Times comments.

I absolutely need and welcome reader feedback, and that includes corrections and constructive criticism, since writing without an editor can often be hazardous. I certainly make my share of mistakes.