Didn't watch it last night. Not a big fan of Ken Burns, all those sepia photos, those droning readings of all those earnest letters, and in the end what does it all mean? It don't mean shit.
I did tune it in at the beginning, no sepia photos, no earnest letters, just old newsreel footage. There was a certain kind of film they used then (I've heard about movies where they purposely use it to get a period feel) where the colors popped but looked a little artificial. It's like putting the scene in a glass box, a panorama for us oldsters to walk by and shake our heads while the young 'uns look curiously. What was that all about?
I don't think I knew anything about Vietnam before the Bay of Tonkin Incident in August of 1964. Oh I had read stuff here and there. There was something going on in Indochina, some skirmishing between us and the reds, but suddenly here they had actually fired on one of our ships. It turned out they hadn't, but that didn't come to light until much later. But anyway, I, like many of my fellow Americans, was incensed, how dare those pipsqueaks shoot at our ships. They needed to be taught a lesson, the only thing they understood, like all of America's enemies before and since, was force.
The Resolution was passed, things were going on in that faraway place, but we didn't hear much about it, but then the protests started. Who were these shadowy anti-American nuts? The University didn't want them on campus, set up a free speech area just in back of the student union where you could have free speech, implying I guess that you couldn't have elsewhere. The protesters didn't like being confined to that little out-of-the-way area and it didn't matter because as the war grew so did the protests and soon they were all over campus.
I don't know when my mind changed. At the beginning I was for the war, and then I was against it, but I don't remember a single incident where I sat down thinking one way and then stood up thinking another, very likely approaching the end of my 2-S deferment was a factor.
LBJ, it was his war. It started with Ike and went through Nixon, but the big expansions came with LBJ. I went to the LBJ Museum in Austin a couple years ago and there was room after room of his efforts on civil rights and the war was like just s footnote.
I got my CO, went down to Herrin. I thought oh shit they are going to hate an anti-Vietnam guy like me in a small town in southern Illinois, but they didn't hardly care. Most of them hadn't been out of Williamson county for years and they hardly knew what went on outside it.
The demonstrations escalated, clean Gene had some success in the primaries, LBJ collapsed like a house of cards. I saw him on TV everybody was expecting some war escalation and I believe there was one, but right at the end of the speech he announced his resignation. I was thrilled, we had won, it was over.
Well not quite, HHH was too chicken to come out against the war, and then in came Nixon with his secret plan which involved a lot of bombing and then doing what he could have done on day one, declaring victory and pulling out.
Well okay then victory, I mean victory for us anti Vietnam types. Our bold protests had ended the war and put America on the right path. That's what I thought then, anymore I wonder how much effect the demonstrations had. My closest estimate is not much.
Nixon shot himself in the foot, Ford seemed ineffectual, so did smiling Jimmy, and then it was Morning in America. Hard times were hitting Champaign, the mighty midwest had become the frost belt and then the rust belt, downtown was full of empty storefronts, I couldn't find a job.
I ended up going to Austin Texas, I had some piddly little paper shuffling temporary job. I was adrift in a red state, like the Israelites in Egypt, humbly migrating from the north, grateful for any job they might give me. What, I wondered, pushing my pencil across the paper, was the lesson of Vietnam?
It was a thing often discussed after the war, what was the lesson of Vietnam. No definitive answer was ever found, it seemed like it was probably something like the arrogance of power. Just because we were the strongest power on God's green earth, it didn't behoove us to go willy nilly into wars with little countries.
I guess that's what I thought. Things got better. I got a solid job, but then I quit it thinking I could do better and went broke and had to move to Chicago, but then I got that fat state job. Reagan's two terms ran out, Curious George had a term and went down to the big dog. The economy was booming, I got my condo in the tower. America seemed back on track again. And then there was the blue dress, and then the hanging chads, and then 911. And then the drums were beating to get into Iraq. But surely that wouldn't happen, hadn't we learned the lesson of Vietnam?
I had a friend, a worry wart, who kept warning that we would get into the war, but I pooh poohed it. It would never happen. Cooler heads would prevail. Hadn't we learned the lesson?
And then we were in it, I learned that the lesson of Vietnam wasn't what I thought it was, what it was was, this shit happens all the time Kid, get used to it.
I don't think we have discussed Vietnam since Old Dog joined the forum. Beagles and I have gone after each other on it a couple times. Way back when the war was going on the National Lampoon had an article set many years later a pro and an anti Vietnam guy were in a nursing home in a wheelchair and on a walker were going at it just like the 60s were never over. It was funny because it was so ridiculous, who could imagine such a thing ever happening?
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