I love many of Ken Burns’ documentaries but am also aware that he wants to create a “usable past” to unite Americans---not further divide them. He prioritizes, therefore, the subjective truths of participants from all sides over a more analytic search for truth.
I have just watched the first episode of his latest, The Vietnam War ( with collaborator Lynn Novick), but it’s the most important one I suspect because it supplies the framework for understanding the unfolding tragedy. The narrative by Peter Coyote uses the words “in good faith” to describe US policy-makers motives and “failure” to describe the results two decades later.
The US policymakers knew full well that the Vietnamese revolution was aimed at ending French colonialism, but despite that awareness, we chose to intervene—first to help the French under Eisenhower (notwithstanding his pessimism about the outcome he just HAD to give aid under the radar) and then under Kennedy. The latter is shown acknowledging that Ho Chi Minh was fighting a just anti-colonial struggle in an interview when he was in the Congress, but then, at a later time, saying we had to prevent that from succeeding because of anti-Communism.
If this was an isolated instance of the US intervening in the affairs of other countries one might accept the notion of our behavior being motivated by good intentions. But, given the long record of US clandestine and military efforts against popular non-Communist movements in the so-called Third World before Vietnam---the Philippines, Cuba, long before Castro, Iran in 1953---and afterward--- Dominican Republic, Chile, the Congo, Indonesia--- it’s hard to take these sentiments seriously. Just like the European colonial powers of the past, we have taken it as our right to determine the political choices of other people. Fighting Communism was just a handy rationale for what would have occurred anyway if the nationalist movements became too independent for our good, with “our” being something unrelated to the well-being of our citizenry on the whole.
In The Vietnam War, the first episode shows how Ho Chi Minh had to accept the Geneva Accords because the Soviets and Chinese who had supplied needed military support were no longer willing to take risks to liberate all of Vietnam. But, the omniscient narrator, Peter Coyote, suggests the US was powerless to prevent Diem from refusing to honor the agreement to have elections in 1955 to unify the country---Ho would have become President. Without our military aid, Diem, like Rhee in South Korea before him---in what was a dress rehearsal for Vietnam---could not have remained in power and Vietnam would have been unified as it is now. Burns and Novick prefer to view us as helpless, when we were, in fact, helpful.
I am sure the rest of the documentary will have many powerful moments, but viewers will come away unshaken regarding any prior belief they may have about our initial noble intentions, even if they are rightly distrustful of the willingness of our leaders, to be honest about how our wars are going. The Vietnam War certainly eroded faith in our government to tell us the truth about whether we are winning or losing on the battlefield, but we also need to learn to be skeptical about whether we should be winning on a case by case basis. US public opinion on wars seems almost entirely to follow the following trajectory: 1) oppose any possible war, in theory, 2) support one that is foisted upon us that is not failing, 3) oppose wars when it becomes clear we can't win. Burns and Novick’s effort won't change that.
We have two situations now that could lead to insane wars: Iran and Korea. These are almost entirely because of our determination to meddle in places where we have no business, a tendency that long predated the rise of Donald Trump. No one else thinks either country is planning to use nuclear weapons as an offensive weapon, and Iran wasn't even really wanting one after 2007. We have the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Syria where ISIS is losing, but al Qaeda is probably going to inherit their fighters.
We might draw a variety of conclusions about what we should do in these different situations, but the questions should be: 1) what would happen if we did nothing and would that be so bad? 2) Are there realistic better alternatives? I don’t think there are better real alternatives to Assad in Syria because only ISIS or al Qaeda could defeat him and the so-called democratic opposition is not really into democracy after Assad and disorganized to boot. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have no ambitions other than there.
ISIS is different. It is analogous to the Nazis regarding using violence to expand their territory, establish a caliphate, and impose their ideology in areas they control. Terror is directed against both apostates (i.e., non-Wahabbi Muslims) and infidels (i.e., non-Muslims). Al Qaeda might, by contrast, at least rhetorically, seems to be distinguishing itself from ISIS in claiming they do not seek to establish a caliphate in the foreseeable future or use force against apostates, only the infidels; maybe not even against the latter who do not oppose them. Bin Laden attacked the US because we materially supported its enemies in the Muslim world. Some of our friends there, actually pretty much all of them, were autocrats. He did not attack the Scandinavian countries, Japan, and lots of other places populated by "infidels."