Vietnam, 35 Years Later

[jake]

A war covered by the press like no other war. And no other may ever be covered the same way. I remember some of these photos from when they first appeared. I can still remember Nick Ut's photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc sitting out in a newspaper spread open on our kitchen table.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/vietnam_35_years_later.html

[LarryD]

No press coverage can ever show what it was like but that was a good start. I know many of my friends are of that era and I just missed it by a year.

[Greg M]

  Larry Burrows life was incredible and once I saw his Vietnam photos "Yankee Papa...." in particular I read everything I could get on him.  Never forget the day I walked into a Las Vegas camera store and there on the wall was a signed Nick Ut.  Seems like he knew the owner well and would often stop in while on assignment and say hello.
  Lot of friends went over to Vietnam, most came back, and those that did were changed forever.  One in particular spent a lot of time in a veteran's center and was a non-stop talker on his experiences.  He spent hours trying to purge and forget memories.  It was an unforgettable experience listening.
 

[Ronald Bishop]

Larry, I am anoughter that slipped through the cracks, when I arrived in Korea it was about over, I stayed in a replacement company for 4/5 weeks, then was sent back to Ft.Benning.
   In 1963 a lot of our guys were heading for VN from Ft.Campbell, some of them were going for the pay incentives. They could almost double thier base pay.
   MY ETS was Jul 63

[LarryD]

Ronald

Sometimes a crack in your life is the space it needs to move on.

[Major Black]

I wish wars were still covered like this. Perhaps people wouldn't be so apathetic and disconnected with the reality.
Those are some truly powerful images, which I'm sure had a big impact on ending the war (along with TV footage).

[jake]

People who work at newspapers may tell you that every time they do a feature on the actual impact of war and include photos of the reality on the ground, they are inundated with letters that complain about an assortment of issues - of bias, giving comfort to the enemy, not showing positive images, depressing people, glamorizing war, etc. etc. etc.

Rather than being a product of news coverage (or lack thereof,) I think most people choose apathy. It is the barcalounger of the current epoch.

[LarryD]

Well We won WWII and I believe that the news reels and what was in the papers had to go through the Government. I am all for freedom of the press and of speech but as a citizen one must use restraint in all things.

[lesged]

Once they started embedding media journalists and photographers, the public was shielded from the grotesque aspects of war.  

Most shots we see are breaking down doors of civilian houses. Fire and smoke of battles are seen blurry and far, far away. And the same shots are seen over and over on TV.  When you see allied patrols fights in the streets the enemy are never seen guns are shot at unseen enemy. We only see the enemy bodies.

Conversely, the photos of US servicemen/women wounded, dead, or of their coffins coming back to the USA became taboo. War photos have been sterilized. That's one good reason the people are apathetic.

All the more reason we react so emotionally to the ones shown above from Vietnam War. Are there some war photos taken in Iraq and Afghanistan that equal any of the Vietnam ones? The ones I think of are mostly symbolic. A soldier holding a small civilian child; or gun partially buried, upside down in the sand, with the fallen  marine's helmet on the butt of weapon, and his boots next to it. or a group of exhausted troops taking a cat nap in shallow dug foxholes in the sand. They look completely  worn out from carrying the heavy gear they are required to wear in temperature well  over 100 degree. That is a powerful statement. Our boys carry the latest and the best equipment, but it's awful heavy. The insurgents wear light clothes, no helmet just a turban and a weapon.
 
Another reason for apathy is the much smaller percentage of the US population serving their country than in previous wars. When I served in WW2, there was hardly a family in any state that didn't have someone in the service, many times multiple sibling. My older brother and I enlisted, our younger brother was too young .

If you see a map of the hometowns of service personnel who have entered the service since the draft ended and a voluntary service was introduced. I'd guess you'd see an uneven distribution geograhically . Certain states have been the backbone of the military service.

I honor them, and all those who were lost and maimed in battle, unseen by the public, because someone decided we couldn't take it, it would be too upsetting. It would offend the heroes' families.

I doubt that very much. It's another way of separating the vast majority of the public, who have no immediate or extended members of their family fighting in the war, from being connected to the horrors of war. The fog of war is a bureaucratic weapon to hide what's really going on, but is used effectively as an excuse for the horrible mistakes the generals have made, especially in cases like friendly fire. Explanations such as, "during war bad things happen; it's the fog of war."

Sorry for getting up on a soapbox, but when reporters and photograhers were forbidden to go anywhere they chose to go in Iraq and Afghanistan and were forbidden to speak to people who witnessed any encounters when insurgents or civilians were killed or wounded or maimed Oops! I meant "injured" that's the approved military nomenclature for our recent wars.  

It was a sad day for the Freedom of the Press when these tight restrictions were put on our press. The excuse that it's too dangerous for the press, or they may write something that will aid the enemy is a load of crap. The Iraq and Afghanistan are skirmishes compared to the Civil War, WW1 and WW2. The brave journalists and photographers of those wars  willingly risked their lives along with the troops right at the front. and we were better served to have an accurate account of the war from their stories and photos to be put in archives, and hopefully in history books, for posterity.

What our grandchildren and great- grand children will see is a general standing on a podium with a screen next to him and pointer in hand explaining the famous battles in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Btw can anyone tell me which ones they were? I've already forgotten. Then again, maybe there never were any. Most deaths and serious wounds were caused by IEDs and fighting in little towns,  I would guess from the filtered news we get.    

[sandeha]

Can't put myself forward as any kind of statistician, but some writer somewhere recently pointed out that the number of western allied troops lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past nine years totals at around half an hour of losses on the first day of the battle of the Somme.

Miserable statistic.

[jake]

And there is the army's own statistic that between the start of the invasion of Afghanistan and the taking of Kabul, more Afghani non-combatants (i.e. civilians) were killed than the number of people killed in the attack on the World Trade Centers.

Well We won WWII and I believe that the news reels and what was in the papers had to go through the Government. I am all for freedom of the press and of speech but as a citizen one must use restraint in all things.

If you are talking about restraint in terms of not yelling fire in a crowded movie house or not speaking without factual basis to what you say or not criticizing something unfairly or co-opting an altruistic agenda for purposes of advancing a self-serving agenda, I would agree with that sort of restraint. That's ethical behavior.

But if you mean restraint in terms of not reporting things to the public that are factual events related to US foreign policy (or any policy of this representative government) I think you risk 1.) letting the public off too easily in their responsibility for the choices that are made by the people they have elected to represent them at the federal level and 2.) allowing the government to think they can operate in the dark without any risk of those operations being brought out into the light and thus risking their careers and agendas.

I definitely believe in the 4th branch of the government being the press. Unfortunately, I think corporate interests and the increased strength of minority voices in this country, largely through the application of the fortunes of a few self-interested parties, have waged a very successful war against the rapid and factual reporting of information. It just isn't to their benefit to have a strong news media in this country.

And I think that is the true legacy of Vietnam & the Watergate episode. The people in this country who depend on an ill-informed public to make their money and conduct business-as-usual saw what happens when actual news is broadcast and people have facts & images at their immediate disposal on a nightly basis. So to protect their interests, they began buying up television channels, newspapers, waging legal battles against freedom of information, increasing the restrictive rules governing information, lobbying for personnel changes in the courts that would make the judicial system more friendly to corporate interests, etc. etc. etc.

Now we have corporations protected under the same freedom of speech laws that protect citizens. BUT how many corporations do you know that have been locked up for photographing a train in a station? Arrested at a political event for standing peacefully on a street corner with a sign? Speech is no longer what you say. It is what you spend. Where are the regulations that encourage restraint there? One by one they are disappearing. Congress is now considering legalizing online gambling, ostensibly because of the tax revenues it would bring, but the reality is that millions of dollars of "free speech" have been spent lobbying Congress to get them to repeal the law prohibiting online gambling, passed in 2006.

But enough of my rant, let's listen to Howard Beale on the topic of restraint.

[lesged]

Jorn,

Amen, to everything you wrote.

Loved seeing again the film Network's "Mad as Hell" rant.
How prophetic! That's what we all need to do. I'm ready.  Have they started yelling it in New YorK?

An afterthought:

Now in the digital age, we have a new way of fighting the insurgents and it is so clean and remote; it's real cool.  Apropos, it avoids the hot climate of the Middle- east and allows you to sleep each night at home with your family. It's the ultimate video game where swivel-chaired, flightless, pilots sit in air conditioned rooms back in the USA.  They can wage war with the "worst of the worst of our enemies." With their state of the art guidance systems and quick reflexes they maneuver the drones and command them to shoot missile at, or drop bomb on, their targets: insurgents' vehicles, or homes --not to worry, they never have innocent wives or children-- or walking across the street.

I can picture the smacking of pilots hands against each other, in high fives, and later gather at an air conditioned bar to relive the excitemint of that day's successful kills. Then, they head home for a nice warm meal, kiss their kids good night and sleep between clean sheets. Will the photos of that kind of war get a Pulitzer prize?  I don't think so.

I saw one of those drone "pilots" on TV. There he was with wings on his breast, and bars or leaves on his shoulders. He was a seasoned pilot with air combat tours recorded in his service record. When asked by the interviewer, "Which was the more exciting kills, the ones you made from jets or guiding the drones," the pilot replied, "The drones are way more thrilling" and then added, " I never want to climb back into a plane again, this is the future for military pilots."  

Shucks! that's bad news for the manufactures of the $$$multi-million fighter planes or helicopters. But somehow, I think they'll manage to stay in the war business. That and the international drug trade are just too big to fail.

What if they declared a new war and nobody showed up? That would be a pleasant surprise.

[Mike Kovacs]

I think our pilots are going to be employed for many more years. The Canadian government just dropped $16B on a F-35 Joint Strike Fighter contract.

[LarryD]

Yep but the U.S. Air Force as a test just retro fitted a bunch of older F-16s as combat drones. These are not the drones that are used as target practice but actual go to war aircraft. I figure it is just a matter of time before fighters are running 50/50 pilot and pilotless.

 Taking the humanity out of war one piece of the war machine at a time as they already have pilotless tanks.

[jake]

Nothing seems to be able to defeat a cell phone wired to a glob of Semtek though.

BTW Mike, where did that $16B come from? Is it domestically financed or is there some sort of foreign participation?

Obviously, the purpose is to cover the area thawing in the Arctic. The jets are evidently extreme condition capable. And that means the Russians and all the mineral rights battles & navigational battles that are on the horizon with the opening of the Arctic ice and the Northwest Passage. So that would lead me to believe that at least the United States was pushing Canada to armor up. Typically, the US sends foreign "development" money to whatever country, and then that country contracts with a US manufacturer to build their airplanes or tanks or whatever, spending said "development" money.