Perhaps one of the oldest clichés is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick are doing their utmost to ensure that we do not forget some of the egregious mistakes made in Vietnam just over 50 years ago.
In early September, PBS aired the first installment of the newest and perhaps most comprehensive documentary about the war that has come to define an entire generation. Simply titled “The Vietnam War,” Burns and Novick’s tour de force explores just about every difficult truth, political faux pas and consequence of circumstance that helps to make sense of the war itself.
Over the course of 10 installments ranging from an hour-and-a-half to two hours, the audience is exposed to every angle of the Vietnam War through the experiences of the soldiers, families and journalists that came to know its impacts firsthand, and are still trying to comprehend how or if it was all worth it.
Given that more than 2.7 million Americans served on active duty in Vietnam, there is a good chance that many students and faculty here on the campus have been directly or indirectly affected by the war.
Personally, both of my grandfathers served time in Vietnam and by every account from my parents, they were momentously changed by their experiences.
I am willing to bet, however, that many other students and faculty who had parents and grandparents fight in the war cannot simply talk with those veterans about their experiences. The documentary goes to great lengths to examine just how difficult it is for veterans and their families to recount and reflect upon Vietnam.
Jonah Baker | Argonaut
On top of examining in depth the battles and politics that determined the course of the war, Burns and Novick spend time reviewing the war’s effects on the home front. Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and many others provide exceptionally fitting background and transitional music that further highlight the antiwar sentiments that turned violent at Kent State and elsewhere.
Simply put, the Burns and Novick have taken an impressive stab at the herculean task of documenting the generation-defining conflict. Both fortunately and unfortunately, it could not have come at a more opportune time.
The documentary is available for free at pbs.org, and the general population it targets is extremely liable to binge entire shows over the course of a week or two. Americans have a rare opportunity to substantially educate themselves on a subject that is so commonly misunderstood.
Unfortunately, the extremely tense relations between the United States and North Korea scream for the lessons of Vietnam to be better recognized.
For Americans, both cases feature braggadocios leaders and governments that act behind the public’s back and lie to its face.
Much like in Vietnam, a conflict in Korea would leave black eyes on both sides. While the nature of conflict itself has changed, the effects have not.
While I do not expect American decision makers to dedicate 18 hours of their time to digesting Burns and Novick’s documentary, I do hope that they will at least remember the last time that America fought an unpopular war against a communist country thousands of miles from home with global repercussions.
For everyone else, the work is still perhaps the most educational material on America’s most divisive war. We should all be educated, and for once we all have the necessary opportunity.
The British philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
“The Vietnam War” is an excellent piece of documentary filmmaking that is especially important in today’s political climate.
The war was an incredibly painful time then and its scars still affect us now, but properly educating ourselves can prevent the same mistakes in the future.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker