'The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick' Episode Review: 'A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973)'

Episode Nine: A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973)

Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward

Directed by: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

South Vietnamese forces fighting on their own in Laos suffer a terrible defeat. Massive U.S. airpower makes the difference in halting an unprecedented North Vietnamese offensive. After being re-elected in a landslide, Nixon announces Hanoi has agreed to a peace deal. American prisoners of war will finally come home - to a bitterly divided country. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List

On September 27, 2017, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired "A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973), the ninth episode of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War. Produced by Burns, Novick, and Sarah Botstein, this 10-part documentary series is an attempt to explain, as best as possible, one of the most tragic and controversial events in American history. A decade in the making, The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick  features interviews of participants from all sides, including civilians and veterans from North and South Vietnam. (Hence the series’ tagline: “There is no single truth in war.”)

(C) 2017 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Florentine Films

"The Vietnam War drove a stake right into the heart of America. It polarized the country as it had probably not been polarized since the Civil War, and we've never recovered." - Phil Gioia, Army veteran, A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973)

John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning picture catches Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway from South Florida, as she screams in horror as Kent State University student Jeffrey Miller dies of a gunshot wound from a volley fired by Ohio National Guardsmen during an antiwar protest on May 4, 1970. (C) 1970 Valley News Dispatch

Spring 1970. As the antiwar movement gains momentum after President Richard M. Nixon orders U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to make an "incursion" into Communist sanctuaries in neighboring Cambodia, the fissures between America's liberals and conservatives become a wide gaping chasm. What began in the mid-1960s as a somewhat civil if somewhat vocal difference of opinions over the morality and necessity of America's war in Southeast Asia has morphed into a near-state of civil war that threatens to tear the nation apart. And as the levels of frustration and anger on both sides of the argument rise, violence erupts on the streets of American cities and in the once-peaceful grounds of colleges and universities such as Ohio's Kent State University.

"A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973)" picks up The Vietnam War's narrative where "The History of the World" left off. President Nixon and a national security staff led by Henry Kissinger know that America can't win the war in Vietnam and have doubts that South Vietnam's unpopular President, Nguyen Van Thieu, will prevail against the Communists in Hanoi once U.S. troops depart. Nevertheless, Nixon publicly claims that the policy of "Vietnamizing" the war  - that is, giving the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) responsibility for the actual fighting -  is working.

"A Disrespectful Loyalty" spends much time discussing the various antiwar movements, their different ideologies and methods, and "the Establishment's" efforts to discredit them all as being inspired, organized, and even supported by Moscow, Beijing, and Hanoi. Some groups, like the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, were allowed to protest without heavy police presence or arrests; others, like the more militant Mad Dogs, were often portrayed as reflecting the philosophies and modus operandi of most of the other antiwar protesters. 

Though there were radicals and revolutionary-wannabes whose goals were to spark riots and cause mayhem, most of the protesters were motivated by a genuine desire to stop a war that they believed was unjust and immoral. As John Musgrave, a Marine who had been wounded in action in Vietnam, says about his involvement in the antiwar protests, "It finally dawned on me, and this was a painful process, that I wasn't helping anybody by keeping my mouth shut." 

Did his status as a protester clash with Musgrave's pride of being a Marine veteran? Was he turning his back on the principles he acquired in the Corps?

"Yes, I was a Marine," Musgraves says, "but I was first and foremost a citizen of the United States of America. And being a citizen, I had certain responsibilities. And the largest of these responsibilities is standing up to your government and saying no when it's doing something that you think is not in this nation's best interests. That is the most important job that every citizen has. I served my country as honorably when I was in Vietnam Veterans Against the War as I did as a United States Marine, and in fact I conducted myself as a Marine the whole time I was in VVAW - my whole life I've conducted myself as a Marine."

 The episode also shows how the struggle between conservatives and liberals about the Vietnam War planted the seeds of today's culture wars. The Nixon Administration, which was supported by large numbers of conservative voters, tended to treat protesters as if they were enemies of the nation and did everything it could to exploit the fear and distaste that many Americans felt toward the more revolutionary, incendiary activists. 

For instance, "A Disrespectful Loyalty" includes a segment of a September 1970 "David Frost" interview in which student Eva Jefferson, the daughter of a Vietnam veteran debated with Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. (The clip below is not from The Vietnam War, but it was used in the episode.)

As Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns write in the companion volume, The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, Agnew "sought to paint the antiwar movement as dangerously radical" and accused Jefferson of encouraging her fellow antiwar activists to use violence to advance their cause.

She would have none of it. "What I attempted to do before the Scranton Committee, she said, "was to explain what could motivate someone to blow up a building. I did not say I endorse this, and if you read my testimony quite carefully, you'll know that I didn't. And it's this type of picking up on what I allegedly said instead of what I really said, that really disturbs me....You're making people afraid of their own children. Yet they're your children, they're my parents' children, they're children of this country.... There's an honest difference of agreement on issues, but when you make people afraid of each other, you isolate people. Maybe this is your goal. But I think this can only have a disastrous effect on the country."

"Let me say first that isolating people is not my goal," Agnew responded. "If that were true, I wouldn't be here tonight....Let me take exception to that oft-repeated rationale that violence is the only way to get results."

Jefferson did not back down: "I was trying to explain to you the rationale of some students who are openly revolutionary," she answered. "You're not listening to what I'm saying." 

Agnew wasn't interested in listening. "Dividing the American people has been my main contribution to the national political scene," he once boasted. "I not only plead guilty to this charge, but I am somewhat flattered."

The Nixon Administration's end game was to reap the political bounty of making liberals and antiwar demonstrators to be, as Jefferson tells Burns and Novick, "these scary, horrible people. We weren't. We were against the war. We thought the war was wrong. We thought we were lied to. And we were in the streets. America has always had a rich tradition of protests. We were founded by protesting England. So to make people afraid of their kids I think was wrong. But that's what they were about. They were fearmongers."

In Southeast Asia, as U.S. forces are gradually drawn down, the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese government and military become too apparent. The first crack in the façade of the ARVN as a viable fighting force is Operation Lam Son 719, a limited invasion of Laos by the South Vietnamese army intended to disrupt an expected North Vietnamese offensive in the South by attacking Tchepone, a supposed key Communist supply depot area. 

The U.S. and South Vietnamese planners estimate that only 20,000 Communist troops are in the target area; in reality, Hanoi has some 60,000 troops in the vicinity, equipped with tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy artillery provided by North Vietnam's sponsors, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

Covering a nearly three-year-long period of the Vietnam War, "A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973) also discusses various events and topics, including:

• The effects of Nixon's policies of détente with the Soviet Union and his 1972 overture to open a dialogue with the People's Republic of China on the Paris peace negotiations
• The horrible conditions in which American POWs lived while in the custody of North Vietnam
• The heatedly divided public reaction to Second Lieutenant William Calley's conviction in his court martial after the My Lai massacre was revealed
• Nixon's reaction to the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and how his efforts to cover up his tampering with the peace negotiations in '68 led directly to the Watergate scandal in 1972
• North Vietnam's Easter Offensive of March-April 1972 and Nixon's riposte
• Nguyen Van Thieu's "one-man" presidential election and his refusal to cooperate with the negotiations
• The peace negotiations in Paris and their role in Nixon's re-election in November of 1972
• The "Christmas Bombing" campaign of late 1972
• Why U.S. veterans can't forgive Jane Fonda for her ill-conceived trip to Hanoi in 1972 and participating openly in North Vietnam's propaganda efforts against the U.S.

South Vietnamese children flee from their village after a South Vietnamese Skyraider fighter-bomber dropped napalm on them in a tragic case of mistaken identity; the pilot thought the children was a group of escaping Communist troops. Photo credit: Nick Ut, (C) 1972 Associated Press 

It is, perhaps, a cliché, but if we are to understand why 21st Century America is so polarized and the gap between conservatives and liberals is seemingly so unbridgeable, it's important to look at the Vietnam War and its era. 

In "A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973), viewers who wonder how a man as undiplomatic and unsuited for the Presidency as Donald Trump can be elected  to the same office as JFK, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon will see how the war planted the seeds for today's harvest of discord, anger, and sorrow.

A man like Trump - who avoided going to Vietnam thanks to various deferments and a high draft number in the lottery system Nixon instituted during his first term - doesn't get elected in a socio-cultural vacuum. His rise to political power and the fierceness of his supporters to keep him in office is the culmination of a struggle between America's two main political bands that began over 50 years ago.

If you look at the footage of the protests and counterdemonstrations that took place in America between 1970 and 1972, you'll see familiar scenes of scruffy looking youngsters - some violent agitators, most not - facing off against flag-waving construction workers, staid-looking women in sensible clothes, and middle-aged men (mostly white) holding signs that say "America Love It OR Leave It" and similar slogans. It's hard not to look at those images without seeing parallels - both visual and political - to the struggles between Trump supporters and their opponents.

Ken Burns has remarked in interviews - before, during, and after The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick that America is where it is in 2017 as a result of the war and the divisions it created in the society. 

As Army veteran  Phil Gioia says at the start of the episode,"The Vietnam War drove a stake right into the heart of America. It polarized the country as it had probably not been polarized since the Civil War, and we've never recovered."

I've watched my fair share of movies (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, We Were Soldiers ) and documentaries (Vietnam: A Television History, Last Days in Vietnam) about this conflict, and they are all worth seeing. But Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and co-producer Sarah Botstein have brought the Vietnam conflict back into America's living rooms with an immediacy and sense of tragic loss unlike no other film project about the nation's "lost crusade" in Southeast Asia.

In The Vietnam War, Ward, Burns and Novack labored for 10 years to tell a multifaceted story with multiple points of view (American, North and South Vietnamese, civilian and military) in a moving and informative fashion.

Their endeavor is made possible by the skills of principal cinematographer Buddy Squires; editors Tricia Reidy, Paul Barnes, Erik Ewers, and Craig Mellish; composers Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and David Cieri (The Roosevelts: An Intimate History). Together with narrator Peter Coyote, the Florentine Films team make "A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973)"  a fascinating - and heart-breaking - window into one of America's most tragic periods. 

Source: Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, New York, 2017