ronkovic This series relies on an unknown British academic (what role did they have in the war?) and a selective narrative that posits it was all the north, and soviet Russia, and China's fault. There was no support for the vietmihn in the south, and the usual "we would have won if hippie politicians would just let us win" nonsense. To this day, people still cant understand the ideology of their enemy, who fought for nationalism far more than for communism. They eventually went to war with all of their communist neighbors to preserve a Vietnam free of foreign domination, long after the US left Vietnam. First some basic facts.During World War II, the U.S. collaborated with the resistance group the Vietminh and their leader, Ho Chi Minh, in their fight against Japan. In the postwar period, however, the U.S. feared Communist expansion into Southeast Asia. In 1954, as France withdrew its forces in defeat, the Geneva Accords established the countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Vietnam was partitioned into north and south sectors until elections to be held by 1956. Fearing a victory by Ho Chi Minh, the Eisenhower administration collaborated with the South Vietnam leadership to prevent elections and subsequently sent military aid and advisors. Under President John F. Kennedy, the number of "advisers" increased to more than 16,000, some of whom engaged in counterinsurgency efforts and actual combat. Although Kennedy opposed large scale U.S. involvement, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, began regular bombings and escalated troops to more than 500,000 by 1967. Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, scaled back to 39,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by September 1972, but initiated bombing raids into Cambodia in 1969 and sent ground troops there in 1970. The U.S. and North Vietnam reached a cease-fire agreement in January 1973, and the South Vietnamese regime fell in April 1975. More than one million people died during the war, including an estimated 925,000 North Vietnamese, 184,000 South Vietnamese, and 57,000 American soldiers.This series holds that anti-communism was the central and all-pervasive fact of U.S. foreign policy from at least 1947 until the end of the sixties. After World War II, an ideology whose very existence seemed to threaten basic American values had combined with the national force of first Russia and then China. This combination of ideology and power brought our leaders to see the world in "we-they" terms and to insist that peace was indivisible. Going well beyond balance of power considerations, every piece of territory became critical, and every besieged nation, a potential domino. Communism came to be seen as an infection to be quarantined rather than a force to be judiciously and appropriately balanced. Vietnam, in particular, became the cockpit of confrontation between the "Free World" and Totalitarianism; it was where the action was for 20 years.U.S. involvement in Vietnam is not mainly or mostly a story of step by step, inadvertent descent into unforeseen quicksand. It is primarily a story of why U.S. leaders considered that it was vital not to lose Vietnam by force to Communism. Our leaders believed Vietnam to be vital not for itself, but for what they thought its "loss" would mean internationally and domestically. Previous involvement made further involvement more unavoidable, and, to this extent, commitments were inherited. But judgements of Vietnam's "vitalness"—beginning with the Korean War— were sufficient in themselves to set the course for escalation.Our Presidents were never actually seeking a military victory in Vietnam. They were doing only what they thought was minimally necessary at each stage to keep Indochina, and later South Vietnam, out of Communist hands. This forced our Presidents to be brakemen, to do less than those who were urging military victory and to reject proposals for disengagement. It also meant that our Presidents wanted a negotiated settlement without fully realizing (though realizing more than their critics) that a civil war cannot be ended by political compromise.Presidents and most of their lieutenants were not deluded by optimistic reports of progress and did not proceed on the basis of wishful thinking about winning a military victory in South Vietnam. They recognized that the steps they were taking were not adequate to win the war and that unless Hanoi relented, they would have to do more and more. Their strategy was to persevere in hope that their will to continue—if not the practical effects of their actions—would cause the Communists to relent.

leltahol SEcrets of War takes an exceedingly complex conflict, and reduces it to a simplistic dichotomy of good and evil, with the U.S., of course, being the side of good. Most striking though is what the film omits. In addition to the aforementioned omission of civilian casualties, the film also omits that the war was started on a lie with the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the brutalities committed by U.S. forces, and the indifference of much of the Vietnamese civilian population to their own conflict. All of this in addition to over-playing the threat that was posed by the Soviets. A viewer watching this series, who received no other information about the war, would have some very one sided views of the conflict.Unfortunately, the notion promoted by the US military to this day that in Vietnam the Americans scored all those "battlefield victories" goes unchallenged here. In truth the whole idea of what a victory is, even what constitutes a "battle", had to be re-thought in that conflict.There also are some outright distortions, such as the reason behind Operation Linebackers I and II--the notorious "Christmas Bombing" of Hanoi. It was not Hanoi's intransigence that caused the Paris peace talks to stall. The problem was the administration in Saigon--our own side, that is--that showed a sudden and very ill- timed independence and balked at signing the accords, knowing it had no popular support in the South.

joe santus We humans seem instinctively wired for "what-concerns-me&mine-in- the-present", and, understandably so, since the day-to-day survival of each of us depends mainly upon dealing with immediate challenges and problems rather than reflecting upon the challenges involved in events which occurred before we were even born. While I as a sixty- year- old might find it amazing that a seventeen-year-old scarcely knows about Hitler or Stalin, I'm sure that those who were sixty when I was seventeen were equally incredulous that any seventeen- year-olds then were ignorant of Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II. Most of us are busy enough with the circumstances of life in the era in which we are born to see any need to study history.However, that said, it's a knowledge of history that can provide from-an-unexpected-perspective both hope and tranquility. Because, a study of history makes clear that none of the "evils" nor issues we face in the present are anything essentially new to humanity, and that, despite history showing that humanity isn't getting qualitatively better, history also shows that humanity is not at all getting qualitatively worse. People and situations have always been "this bad", yet, humanity is still here plodding along. This series makes clear that people and situations today are no worse than people and situations were fifty and seventy-five years ago. For example, as this series evidences, US politicians, presidents, and military and government leaders served their personal agendas and smiled while blatantly lying to the US citizenry and the world then no less than they do today. US government used whatever technology was available then to spy on its own citizens and on other nations, and did so under the justification, "defending US interests". US corporations interfered in the governments of other nations when they felt their profits threatened. Words and phrases were deliberately crafted and manipulated by government and businesses in order to discredit competitors and malign those who disagreed with policy. The US public lived in fear then too, no less and perhaps moreso than the fear felt today. And yet, after all that and more, neither the US nor the world "ended". Despite it all, humanity manages to keep its head above water and continue on.This series affirms that "nothing is new under the sun." Its scrutiny of history demonstrates that it's possible for humans to create some shade for ourselves at times. But, more importantly, this series impresses that the glare isn't any worse than ever, and so gives reason not to despair despite that glare being relentless. In spite of ourselves, humanity survives and presses onward.

gjampol I've seen seven episodes of this series and consider them informative, well-produced and smoothly narrated (by Charlton Heston). The focus is largely on World War II but the series branches out and covers the Korean War -- oops! the "police action" in Korea -- the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War and the U.S. invasion of Panama.Perhaps the most interesting episode is on the "Spy Games of World War II" disc, which describes the "battlefield magic" the British used to defeat Gen. Erwin Rommel during the North African campaign.Military and history buffs will undoubtedly eat up the material. And general audiences will unquestionably reap educational benefits.Unfortunately, memories of these wars have faded, and young people today have little knowledge or understanding of World War II, why it was fought and its consequences. Clearly, our educational system is at fault.Ask a high school senior what the Manhattan Project is, and he or she will guess that it's the name of a rock group. What a pity!