[Richard Turpin]

(08-30-2018 06:57 AM)Orson Wrote:  

Why? Because it's largely stripped of the Cold War context. As the now college-aged daughter of a law-prof friend says, "Slavery ended yesterday, but the Cold War ended a million years ago." And that's what she learned about Vietnam War era; and how distorted is the "history" being taught today."

I'm fresh from the series, and you're absolutely right - there was little to no Cold War context now that you mention it. This is exactly why I started the thread, to get insights like this. Stuff I missed myself.

These documentaries are great, but I instinctively know that they omit stuff and can't help but suffer from conscious or unconscious bias. I can live with it as bias is natural and inescapable. I simply use these documentaries etc. as 'starting points' with which I can use to go off and do my own research. Take what is useful, discard the rest.

That clips above (from beta_plus) showing the similarities between 'Nam and Korea were interesting. With hindsight, it was all a shit-show, but you can easily see how they would have taken Korea as a template and (quite reasonably) have assumed they could get it to work again, that it was justifiable.