“An image from the first episode of Ken Burns’ 18-hour documentary The Vietnam War, which premieres on America’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Sunday Photograph: BBC”

It’s going to hurt! Watching The Vietnam War is going to be a journey into truth because Ken Burns tries to be a truth seeker in this 10-part chronicle of an American adventure into an abyss.

There’ll be those (RWNJs) who will say Burns’ effort is blasphemous and anti-American. Among them are those who have not tried to understood the history – those who have only a minuscule understanding of the machinations of elected public servants and their relationships with “those who write the rules.”

This Guardian article is excellent reading.

Here are several more articles worth reading:

“How the Pentagon tried to cure America of its ‘Vietnam syndrome’”

“Vietnam War: Who was right about what went wrong – and why it matters in Afghanistan”

“How Vietnam dramatically changed our views on honor and war”

“During Vietnam War, music spoke to both sides of a divided nation”

The Psychological Effects of the Vietnam War

There were those who were passive bystanders; they neither served on either of the sides in a divided nation.

“‘For those Americans who fought in it and those who fought against it back home, as well as those who merely glimpsed it on the evening news, the Vietnam War was a decade of agony, the most divisive period since the Civil War.’

“Vietnam seemed to call everything into question: the value of honor and gallantry, the qualities of cruelty and mercy, the candor of the American government and what it means to be a patriot. And those who lived through it have never been able to erase its memory, have never stopped arguing about what really happened, why everything went so badly wrong, who was to blame and whether it was all worth it.” – The Miami Herald