Ken Burns series "Vietnam" on PBS

[Mr._Graybeard]

I'm a big fan of this documentary and it made me reassess my opinion of McNamara somewhat.

I saw McNamara speak in the early 1990s (it might have been a promo tour for his memoir, In Retrospect). At that time he clearly expressed remorse for his role in shaping Vietnam policy.

 

[JPatrick]

If you do have a VCR laying around, take care of it, they don't make them any more and my wife and I are struggling to figure out how to save our home made tapes. One of them has us bringing our daughter home in 1983.

You can buy a combo VHS/DVD player and convert them yourself. We have done that with numerous tapes.
Amazon has quite a few different models. Just be sure the model you select will do what you want it to.

 

[travelover]

You can buy a combo VHS/DVD player and convert them yourself. We have done that with numerous tapes.
Amazon has quite a few different models. Just be sure the model you select will do what you want it to.

+1 I bought one for about $100 that converts VHS tapes to DVD quite easily.

 

[samclem]

And yet, we DO have all of that TODAY, and there have been US troops going to Afghanistan since 2001. We have been had military activity in Iraq since 1991.

It seems like the same thing over and over again, but right now nobody cares about today's conflicts, perhaps because the body count is lower. Anyone who is in the military today has seen how much conflict there is daily, and how little of that makes it on the news. Every single deployment of an aircraft carrier in the the last 20 years has involved launching jets that go and bomb bad guys. It's just not news anymore.

And the end of the draft has certainly reduced the sensitivity of the public to long wars.

One lesson military leaders took from our involvement in Vietnam was a determination help assure that the public was really behind any long-term military actions, and that any escalations would be very obvious to the folks at home. They did not want politicians conducting a long war on a shoestring or below the public radar. This concern grew after the draft ended. One step that was taken (especially in the Army) was to put a lot of the capabilities needed for a big or long war (transportation, logistics, medical, etc) into the Guard and Reserves, rather than having them be active duty units. Sure, it was still possible to conduct rapid or limited actions using just the active duty forces, but if things were going to last more than a very short time, it would be necessary to call up Reserve and Guard units. When reservists get mobilized, their co-workers and employers know about it, their friends at church and who attend school with their kids know about it, etc. And these people vote and write letters to their elected officials.

 

[brett]

I think that there is the world of difference between making a mistake in policy or strategy and misleading/lying to the public purely to enhance image,retain power, avoid prosecution or get re-elected.

The latter has been the case for many Governments, democratic or otherwise. I have no doubt that Vietnam did not end this type of leadership. The trick is to uncover while it is occurring so that appropriate actions can be taken vs reviewing it from the rear view mirror.