Growing Up with Vietnam

By ROB PATTERSON

Once I finally began watching “The Vietnam War,” the latest documentary series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, it wasn’t long before I’d viewed all its 17 hours and change. In some ways it was like the old saw about how your life flashes before you just before you die. At 64, I hope to be around a while longer, but throughout my first three decades of life, the situation in Southeast Asia was a looming presence. As I reached my formative years, it began to ominously crackle, burn, burst and boom.

It’s at the core of my politicization, world view, feelings on power and economics, humanism and addiction to the latest news. It also was pivotal in how I define my duty to our nation (as well as to and also versus the world) and the way I pursue (and eschew) patriotism plus dissent and resistance

I was lucky to be young enough so that by the time I aged into the draft at 18 it had adopted the lottery system and conscriptions had dropped as the war wound down. (I also happily got 342 as my number.) Yet as I watched the series I couldn’t help but ponder what I might have done if drafted. I also wonder if America still had some form of selective service whether it might curb the too often daft military adventurism our nation still engages in (read Iraq for starters) that gets sold as righteous cakewalks yet become quagmires and plagues of unintended consequences.

Vietnam, which is available on Netflix as well as PBS.com, is familiar at yet the same time still foreign ground to all us boomers. And, critics overwhelmingly agree, Burns is at his most masterful yet as he examines not simply the war but the milieu of political, cultural, historical, personal and spiritual (and other) factors within which the long conflict unfolded, raged, wound-down and ended.

What makes The Vietnam War most powerful is its talking heads: Less “experts” and more witnesses who experienced the conflict, telling the story from their boots (or sandals or protest marching footwear) on the ground up. I especially enjoy how it gives due time to the comments from two of the war’s leading literary lights: authors Tim O’Brien (who was drafted into serving), Philip Caputo and Bao Ninh (who was part of North Vietnam’s Youth Brigade). The many who fought on all sides.

The plethora of battle scenes from what was America’s first prime-time televised war convey the intensity and horrors of modern warfare with profound effectiveness. Taped phone conversations by President Lyndon B. Johnson, many with his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (a JFK holdover), give enlightening insight into how he viewed and managed the war that ultimately caused him to take the unprecedented move of stepping down from running for a second elected term (after winning the first time by a landslide). That’s just some of what makes this series so insightful.

It’s beyond the cliche to say that The Vietnam War is required viewing for every American, especially those of us who lived with it in our lives. It is exquisitely balanced and rich with valuable information and wisdom.

As I write this I’ve resisted the urge to make contemporary comparisons. Throughout my viewing I was struck by just how much things have changed since then. But the old saw about how the more things change the more they ... (you know what follows) still has sharp teeth. And the philosopher Santayana was onto something when it comes to the doom of those who do not heed the lessons of history. And Vietnam was what first tore open a great rent in the American consciousness that is so inflamed today.

Even for those of us who lived this history there is much to be learned here. And for future generations at least as much if not more.

Populist Picks

Books: The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien – The former is an engaging collection of stories drawn from O’Brien’s experiences as an infantryman. The latter is a wonderfully imaginative and colorful fictional tale of an Army platoon that follows a member who deserts halfway around the world from the battlefields of ‘Nam to the Paris site of the peace talks.

Book: The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh – A stunning fictional work of memory and rumination that tells the personal story of the war from the North Vietnamese perspective.

Book: A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo – Simply put, this Vietnam War memoir is one of the finest accounts of being in a war ever wriiten.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2018

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