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Plenty of US soldiers were exploited by the American government in the Vietnam war, and not just the ones who were forced to go via draft. Painting everyone with the same broad brush doesn't help your point at all. It's not excusing the deaths/warcrimes against Vietnamese to suggest that not everyone who was too afraid to flee their country to avoid going to war is an inexcusable terrible person.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:46
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I made a meme joke. Don't take it too seriously.soggybagel posted:The perversity of war crimes is the idea that a just morality can be found in it. We can condemn but also attempt to understand what conditions allow humanities worst behaviors to emerge. America is very bad at this. Most countries are. Germany might be the only exception.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:53
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I want to remind everyone that this thread is about the DOCUMENTARY KEN BURNS - THE VIETNAM WAR. I know it's extremely popular, especially among internet leftists to uncritically launch into "US are all war criminals and deserved to die Right on. I had thought there was little direct engagement by the NVA outside the Tet Offensive, but wrong there, too. I am amazed just how much Nixon was able to manipulate the war to his favor. He was a loving monster who should've gone to pound you in the rear end prison.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:00
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" tirades but that is not what this thread is about. I was hoping for a discussion about Ken Burns and his documentaries and how he is presenting the Vietnam war. You got beef for how the war was fought, or want to remind everyone how evil the western nations were in this conflict? Please feel free to go make a D&D thread about it.
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I want to remind everyone that this thread is about the DOCUMENTARY KEN BURNS - THE VIETNAM WAR. I know it's extremely popular, especially among internet leftists to uncritically launch into "US are all war criminals and deserved to die Ok, here's a discussion. The aw shucks, good people with good intentions narrative is a subset of the Great Statesman narrative that allows these venal shitheads to flourish even now. We have been inculcated to accept strong men making tough choices as an excuse for imperialism nonstop in this country instead of seeing them for the selfish, provincial authoritarians they are. Henry Kissinger met with Hillary during the campaign last year and no one batted an eye! That's how complete a rehab these people go through just by virtue of being former Statesman. And I think Burns (though there's plenty of good material in there as well) advancing the "they didn't know better" argument is just another coat of paint in whitewashing American leaders and their actions. He's following in a long tradition that still has effects even today.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:39
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There is also the rampant militarism that means people don't see the disconnect between condemning a war and thanking the soldiers fighting it for their service. Which to be fair also ties into the larger political problem of victim and martyr fetishization.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:46
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Enderzero posted:Ok, here's a discussion. The aw shucks, good people with good intentions narrative is a subset of the Great Statesman narrative that allows these venal shitheads to flourish even now. We have been inculcated to accept strong men making tough choices as an excuse for imperialism nonstop in this country instead of seeing them for the selfish, provincial authoritarians they are. Henry Kissinger met with Hillary during the campaign last year and no one batted an eye! That's how complete a rehab these people go through just by virtue of being former Statesman. And I think Burns (though there's plenty of good material in there as well) advancing the "they didn't know better" argument is just another coat of paint in whitewashing American leaders and their actions. He's following in a long tradition that still has effects even today. I agree I cringed at the line when Ken Burns said American leaders went into Vietnam with the best of intentions. Since it clearly appears they didn't really care much about the well being of the country so much as using it as a chess piece on the great cold war chessboard. There was even an American diplomat who was quoted saying as much. That said, some of these people are extremely complicated figures. LBJ in particular. Here is a man that on one hand signed civil rights legislation, and promoted an expansion of the well-fare state in the Great Society, yet abroad was directing a war that would end up killing millions of people. You can see how this morally devastated people like McNamara at the end. Then you have Nixon who merely used the war to further his own political ambitions.. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 14:50
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Just finished the first episode. I think I've learned more about the Vietnam conflict in an hour in a half than I've learned in my 32 years on Earth. That was engrossing as hell.
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Sep 29, 2017 17:02
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people can have subjectively good intentions and be objectively totally wrong at the same time. that gap is responsible for like 80% of the bad things that ever happen. this already tricky interpretive problem becomes infinitely more complicated when you try truly and definitively to distinguish historically objective facts from the contingent historical perspective of whoever is doing the interpreting. lollin hard at a lot of people for their dumb and low effort moral high horses itt
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Sep 29, 2017 17:17
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I agree I cringed at the line when Ken Burns said American leaders went into Vietnam with the best of intentions. Since it clearly appears they didn't really care much about the well being of the country so much as using it as a chess piece on the great cold war chessboard. There was even an American diplomat who was quoted saying as much. Yeah it really made me wonder how great LBJ's legacy would be if it weren't for Vietnam. Conversely, how bad would JFK's legacy be if he had survived and been reelected and inevitably escalated the war himself.
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Sep 29, 2017 17:17
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Woozy posted:Why would anyone give a poo poo about how it "comes across"? It's an obvious truth. Anyone who is capable of navigating the complex minefield of moral hazard associated with being a mob hitman has all the necessary cognitive tools to recognize how categorically wrong it must be to willingly serve as a Troop in America's wars. If its bad optics or whatever to say so then the people watching are the problem. it's a super bad look to call people stupid or uneducated simply because you have a different perspective in life that someone else never had because of their different upbringing. the american left is as bad as calling their political opponents brainless idiots as the american right is, this is really just a sign of an argument based in anger and spite instead of substance before vietnam, even the academic left had difficulty articulating the idea of america as an imperialist state. there's no way joe flagwaver from rural kansas would be aware of or responsible for that idea or that he should know better that his government would lie to him
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Sep 29, 2017 17:48
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Mahoning posted:Yeah it really made me wonder how great LBJ's legacy would be if it weren't for Vietnam. McNamara opines that the U.S.'s outcome in Vietnam would have been drastically better with JFK, whatever that means. I would take metric-loving McNamara at his word.
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Sep 29, 2017 19:00
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boner confessor posted:it's a super bad look to call people stupid or uneducated simply because you have a different perspective in life that someone else never had because of their different upbringing. the american left is as bad as calling their political opponents brainless idiots as the american right is, this is really just a sign of an argument based in anger and spite instead of substance Referring to back then, I mostly agree with you. It could have been difficult to gain enough worldview by draft age to see through what was happening at a geo-political level. I am less sympathetic to how racist our soldiers and country were, and are. Nowadays, though, I don't think people have much of a leg to stand on given the wide availability of a multitude of views and critical readings - it's particularly shocking to compare how many people back then, in the full throes of racism, didn't support civil rights protests vs now. The numbers are extremely comparable, and that is a disgrace. At no point in our history am I going to stop holding the leaders accountable though. They should have known better, and they still should today. Our institutional memory concerning our history and why things happened is terrible, and we have way too many upper crust shithead warhawks running around.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:14
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Mental Hospitality posted:Just finished the first episode. I think I've learned more about the Vietnam conflict in an hour in a half than I've learned in my 32 years on Earth. That was engrossing as hell. Its actually really informative for how watchable it is. I appreciate that.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:39
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Enderzero posted:At no point in our history am I going to stop holding the leaders accountable though. They should have known better, and they still should today. Our institutional memory concerning our history and why things happened is terrible, and we have way too many upper crust shithead warhawks running around. sure, and we can say in retrospect the decisions they made lead to bad outcomes, but it's difficult to separate the decisions made by those leaders from the desires of the people (most of whom did and many of whom still do) that supported the war because of american jingoism and militaristic pride. johnson and others didn't want to be in the war but they felt carried along because they would lose elections by taking an unpopular stance like "the war is bad and we will let vietnam become communist". and we can also say that we would demand our elected officials make the unpopular but morally right choice, but one ugly aspect of a democracy is that politicians who say unpopular truths instead of comfortable lies don't get elected there's this idea that america was mislead on the war which is true in many respects but i think that americans weren't mislead necessarily on their desire to defeat the communists in battle, that's who our spectral enemy was at the time and americans are a bloodthirsty, vengeful people - especially when we were riding the high of the righteous nazi bashing that was ww2 and gripped with paranoia about communists poisoning the water supply. i mean it's not like it took much to "fool" the american people into invading iraq a second time to depose saddam
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Sep 29, 2017 20:47
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Solaris 2.0 would you consider it rude and off-topic to point out this very expensive series was funded by Bank of America and Koch Industries? That seems like it'd be off-topic, to consider that these aren't charitable organizations and might push a viewpoint, but I wanted to run it by you first. In 1970 a Bank of America in Isla Vista was burned down by activists for their extensive Vietnam war profiteering, Koch is a heavy machinery manufacturer for the petrochemical industry and their distillation columns purified the agent orange which is now a permanent fixture of Vietnam. But yeah let's keep this thread exclusively about cinematography and logic or whatever. One of the central themes of the documentary is the 'search for meaning' for these atrocities. What they're searching for is a meaning beside the obvious: America will maraude all over the globe unless it is stopped from within or defeated in battle.
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Sep 29, 2017 21:29
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boner confessor posted:sure, and we can say in retrospect the decisions they made lead to bad outcomes, but it's difficult to separate the decisions made by those leaders from the desires of the people (most of whom did and many of whom still do) that supported the war because of american jingoism and militaristic pride. johnson and others didn't want to be in the war but they felt carried along because they would lose elections by taking an unpopular stance like "the war is bad and we will let vietnam become communist". and we can also say that we would demand our elected officials make the unpopular but morally right choice, but one ugly aspect of a democracy is that politicians who say unpopular truths instead of comfortable lies don't get elected Also pretty fair, but politicians are a primary driver in why there was communist paranoia in the first place so it's difficult to feel too bad about them having to make hard decisions due to sentiment they helped foment in the first place.
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Sep 29, 2017 22:01
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Enderzero posted:Also pretty fair, but politicians are a primary driver in why there was communist paranoia in the first place so it's difficult to feel too bad about them having to make hard decisions due to sentiment they helped foment in the first place. yeah but not the same politicians. i mean we could argue that being a politician forces you to make lovely bad decisions on behalf of a lovely bad electorate but i dunno how to solve or address that really Mofabio posted:One of the central themes of the documentary is the 'search for meaning' for these atrocities. What they're searching for is a meaning beside the obvious: America will maraude all over the globe unless it is stopped from within or defeated in battle. you should turn this political conviction into direct action in a manner more productive than making extremely whiny moralizing posts. be the change you wish to see in the world
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Sep 29, 2017 22:03
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boner confessor posted:yeah but not the same politicians. i mean we could argue that being a politician forces you to make lovely bad decisions on behalf of a lovely bad electorate but i dunno how to solve or address that really True. We're talking along similar lines but I'm too focused on the political class as a long running concept, where you are, fairly, focused more on the events of the actual thread. Of course, in the end it comes down to Capital and politicians combining to maintain their class status through heavy handed, short sighted decisions and tragedies like the Vietnam War are the natural fallout.
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Sep 29, 2017 22:10
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I thinking Burns framing it early as "best intentions" is mostly fine. Because over the next 10 episodes it's clearly outlined that best intentions don't mean poo poo. I'm definitely going to buy this series but was wondering if anyone already did? Any good special features? And did you buy the package that came with the book? If so how's the book?
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Sep 29, 2017 22:11
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boner confessor posted:it's a super bad look to call people stupid or uneducated simply because you have a different perspective in life that someone else never had because of their different upbringing. the american left is as bad as calling their political opponents brainless idiots as the american right is, this is really just a sign of an argument based in anger and spite instead of substance And if I were trying to make prom queen I would absolutely take into account how it "looks" but not only is this is a different kind of thing, I didn't actually call anyone stupid or uneducated. That's the other side of this debate, determined to plead ignorance on behalf of the noble Troop by ascribing to them some combination of good intentions and terminal gullibility that can slot neatly into this pathetic "Whoops! Warcrimes!" narrative. In fact what I said was almost the conceptual opposite: not only that being stupid is a bad excuse, but that its impossible to actually be that stupid, leaving only one other explanation, i.e., being blood-gargling American parasites who are indistinguishable in moral terms from mob hitmen.
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Sep 29, 2017 22:23
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The politicians are not some hive mind, nor are they unaffected by other politicians and the people. It would be good to stop scapegoating nebulous groups of people and start feeling collective shame. I would suggest comparing it to the legacy of slavery but I realize that means people wearing Nixon pins in some war a hundred years from now.
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Sep 29, 2017 22:29
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Woozy posted:In fact what I said was almost the conceptual opposite: not only that being stupid is a bad excuse, but that its impossible to actually be that stupid, i dunno about that, people can be that stupid. i dunno if i'd call it stupidity though versus just a particular furious myopia on the part of the person advocating a hardline stance on the moral deficiency of past humans also lol at "i didn't call anyone stupid, i just said they lacked the cognitive tools necessary to" please see your political posturing all the way through, coward. don't break kayfabe Woozy posted:leaving only one other explanation, i.e., being blood-gargling American parasites who are indistinguishable in moral terms from mob hitmen. instead of a super self righteous false dichotomy, how about the idea that people who were making decisions sixty years ago based on information they had sixty years ago probably would have made different decisions than you would make today, knowing what you do. that doesn't seem too unreasonable, to me boner confessor fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 22:41
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I think an important thing to remember is that political decisions are not done in a vacuum and undertaken by people under pressure. Time after time in this documentary you see political actors who obviously know what the "right" or more optimal thing to do is. Yet they act against their own personal feelings at time because no one has raw agency to make these choices. Don't read this as me condoning or excusing some of the heinous choices. It's worth noting that a friend of mine recently went to the LBJ presidential library and they had on display a letter he received from a gold star family. The mother wrote an angry letter to LBJ and on display is also the letter he wrote back. If I recall correctly it's an aide who drafted it then he clearly painstakingly did multiple revisions. It wasn't just a form letter. He spent a lot of time on it. What is my point? Not sure. I guess it's just that I'm glad I'm not having to make decisions like that. I really liked the 9th episode with the soldiers throwing their medals too. You see a lot of these later middle aged men all series talking but to see the pictures and video of them as vibrant but scarred young men is moving as it is tragic. And Gimme Shelter is so worn out but set to that scene, the soldiers rage, it just works. It's beautiful.
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Sep 29, 2017 22:50
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boner confessor posted:i dunno about that, people can be that stupid. i dunno if i'd call it stupidity though versus just a particular furious myopia on the part of the person advocating a hardline stance on the moral deficiency of past humans What I literally, actually said was that it was impossible to believe they did not have the cognitive tools necessary to navigate the blah blah blah. If you read carefully, or just at all, you will find this actually the exact opposite sentiment of the one you're so worked up about. And anyway your story about Joe Flagwaver from rural Kansas is insane and wrong. I come from a small Midwestern town that happens to have to produced a number of militant anti-war activists, some of whom I know to have made incredible personal sacrifices to oppose the war. Lots of people did that. Opposition to Vietnam was hardly the province of coastal elites and intellectuals, especially considering the cozy relationship between the Pentagon and the university system. In fact, some of the most valiant and effective resistance to American imperialism has traditionally come from the poorest people with the fewest opportunities, in many cases lacking even a high school diploma. It wasn't just or even primarily a student movement that opposed the war--remember most of them were safe from the draft anyway. No one would accuse the Black Panthers of being sneering intellectuals unaccustomed to the limited opportunities and difficult life choices of the honorable Joe Flagwaver. So I guess my question is: who's really the gullible dipshit falling for war propaganda, here? Because when the military and their flunkies in the media are asked to account for America's disastrous wars, they talk like you do: terrible blunder, tragic mistake, unforeseen consequences, bad intelligence, collateral damage, noble intentions, no way we could have known, did the best we could, we were lied to, and on and on. The unofficial doctrine of MIC apologists and their supplicants within the intellectual class is to avoid at any cost ascribing to U.S. planners and military commanders even the faintest element of free will. They're all just caught up in the flow of history, doing the best they can with the limited resources and information available to them at the time. They certainly never intend to do anything wrong. Like all soldiers, they're really just lovable gently caress-ups at heart. I don't know that someone who reflexively adopts all the major positions of the U.S. military regarding itself and tries to pass it off as their own carefully considered view is really qualified to comment on the effects of disinformation and war propaganda on America's political consciousness.
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Sep 29, 2017 23:21
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Woozy posted:What I literally, actually said was that it was impossible to believe they did not have the cognitive tools necessary to navigate the blah blah blah. If you read carefully, or just at all, you will find this actually the exact opposite sentiment of the one you're so worked up about. it's really bad to call people stupid and bloodthirsty because they disagree with your unheralded genius. maybe you should chill out
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Sep 29, 2017 23:32
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Guess I've got some growing up to do...
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Sep 29, 2017 23:37
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the joe flagwaver narrative is not insane and wrong. how do you think Nixon got elected? by the complicity of craven liberal intellectuals?
Zane fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 00:22
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Don't forget about the stuff that both the North and South did. They literally had an NVA guy describe carving a dude up with a machete in a rice paddy and then threatening anyone who attended the funeral in the first episode, and most of episode two was about the South's leadership basically destroying their own people including forcing farmers to build their own little prisons and perpetrating what was essentially a speed-pogrom against anyone who was undesireable as soon as they had eyes off of them, and the US having to accidentally back a coup that ended in the nation's lovely leaders getting their brains splattered on the floor of an APC after being tricked into thinking they were being taken to safety.
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Sep 30, 2017 00:29
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Shima Honnou posted:Don't forget about the stuff that both the North and South did. They literally had an NVA guy describe carving a dude up with a machete in a rice paddy and then threatening anyone who attended the funeral in the first episode, and most of episode two was about the South's leadership basically destroying their own people including forcing farmers to build their own little prisons and perpetrating what was essentially a speed-pogrom against anyone who was undesireable as soon as they had eyes off of them, and the US having to accidentally back a coup that ended in the nation's lovely leaders getting their brains splattered on the floor of an APC after being tricked into thinking they were being taken to safety. We often forget that the Vietnam war was very much a civil war as well, and like all civil wars was absolutely brutal.
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Sep 30, 2017 01:58
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boner confessor posted:it's really bad to call people stupid and bloodthirsty because they disagree with your unheralded genius. maybe you should chill out yeah if you think about it all morality is relative and we shouldnt judge people with different life experiences
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Sep 30, 2017 02:02
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Mercrom posted:yeah if you think about it all morality is relative and we shouldnt judge people with different life experiences it's pretty stupid to judge them by a standard that didn't exist when they were making those decisions. it's the kind of thing people do when they want to work themselves up into being mad as hell for no reason. this is like one of the first things you discover when you starting learning about how to practice history as a science
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Sep 30, 2017 02:21
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I have no idea what your point is. Personally I find it hardest to hate the worst people. They just remind me of my cat who used to brutally torture mice before eviscerating them. I realize the guards at Auschwitz were perfectly ordinary people and I just sigh and just yield to the fact that our species is terrible. That doesn't mean I go around telling people outraged at specific human atrocities to grow up and embrace nihilism.
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Sep 30, 2017 02:36
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Mercrom posted:I have no idea what your point is. Personally I find it hardest to hate the worst people. They just remind me of my cat who used to brutally torture mice before eviscerating them. I realize the guards at Auschwitz were perfectly ordinary people and I just sigh and just yield to the fact that our species is terrible. That doesn't mean I go around telling people outraged at specific human atrocities to grow up and embrace nihilism. my point is pretty obvious - it's useless to judge historical figures by modern standards. i said that pretty explicitly and i think you're the only one itt having trouble comprehending that right now if you interpret any criticism of your horrible extremist political posturing as "stop telling me to give up and be a nihilist" then that's 100% your problem. maybe try doing something good for someone irl instead of being Extremely Upset Online?
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Sep 30, 2017 02:55
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Ok. I could go with the strict interpretation of "It is useless to judge historical figures by modern standards". "Judge" in this case means to evaluate. "By modern standards" means using the information we have available right now. I don't think you mean that. Or I go with the interpretation that "judge" is meant in a legal or biblical sense, where the subject is evaluated to decide punishment. And "by modern standards" means current law and norms knowledge and morality. I don't think you mean to imply that anyone is advocating legal or vigilante action. I think the only remaining possibility is that it was all a part of a childish indignation at people being mean to history.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:28
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Mofabio posted:One of the central themes of the documentary is the 'search for meaning' for these atrocities. What they're searching for is a meaning beside the obvious: America will maraude all over the globe unless it is stopped from within or defeated in battle. We were defeated in battle. We haven't stopped. Your "obvious meaning" seems a bit less obvious than you say it is.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:44
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Solaris 2.0 posted:We often forget that the Vietnam war was very much a civil war as well, and like all civil wars was absolutely brutal. This is a point literally made in the documentary. Because it's so characterised as an American war (and even in Australia we focus on our part in it), that situation isn't properly appreciated and they're still healing from it. And there are other legacies in this troubling piece from just last year.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:53
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Mercrom posted:Ok. I could go with the strict interpretation of "It is useless to judge historical figures by modern standards". "Judge" in this case means to evaluate. "By modern standards" means using the information we have available right now. I don't think you mean that. Zane fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 15:56
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Zane posted:'judgment' implies both instrumental assessment (causality/means) and ethical assessment (purpose/ends). we try to hold the rules of judgment to universal standards of reason. but past judgment is different from present judgment because the empirical information, if not the criteria of assessment itself, has changed over time. so judgment has to be understood historically, not universally. otherwise you can't understand the contingent basis of your own knowledge claims and will begin speaking solipsistically. Not sure if we agree or disagree. To understand why someone did something wrong you have to try to understand the subjective perspectives of the time. To understand why it was wrong you have to try to understand objective reality as a whole. To "not speak solipsistically", truly empathize with others, and understand your own limitations you have to learn that any mistake or misdeed you or others commit in the future will happen because of the difference between your subjective beliefs and objective truth. Thinking of right and wrong as separate from objective reality is as wrong as thinking of yourself as the ultimate arbiter of objective truth, because it's essentially the same thing.
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Sep 30, 2017 18:38
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Solaris 2.0 posted:For example, I had never fully appreciated how large the Tet offensive was. 80,000 VC/NVA taking part in simultaneous attacks, and they did that several times (February, May, ect)! ? I know they suffered a heavy defeat, but that level of coordination and determination you cannot defeat. I took an America Since 1945 class in my senior year of high school, and one line I'll never forget--I forget the source, but it was some old documentary or video, I took the class in 2001 - 02--was the way Mr. Nagis repeated, "And then there was Tet. Tet was like the roof falling in." I think Clark Clifford said it. Timby fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 18:56
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Mercrom posted:Not sure if we agree or disagree. To understand why someone did something wrong you have to try to understand the subjective perspectives of the time. To understand why it was wrong you have to try to understand objective reality as a whole. To "not speak solipsistically", truly empathize with others, and understand your own limitations you have to learn that any mistake or misdeed you or others commit in the future will happen because of the difference between your subjective beliefs and objective truth. Thinking of right and wrong as separate from objective reality is as wrong as thinking of yourself as the ultimate arbiter of objective truth, because it's essentially the same thing.
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Sep 30, 2017 19:05
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