Vets oppose Emmy for Vietnam documentary

The Burns/Novick documentary “The Vietnam War” is being considered for a 2018 Emmy Award. Veterans for Peace (VFP), with 175 chapters in the U.S. and six overseas, plans an ad in Variety, saying the series does not deserve a “Best Documentary” award. The Rachel Corrie Chapter 109 in Olympia strongly supports this effort. The ad notes that “The Emmy is a powerful recognition of truth in art” and asks Emmy judges to consider whether, “In this war-torn world, what is desperately needed — but what the documentary fails to convey — is an honest rendering of the Vietnam War to help the American people avoid yet more catastrophic wars.”

Acknowledging that Burns and Novick were “justifiably critical of American presidents and military leaders,” VFP says the filmmakers “mainly focus on the harm to U.S. soldiers” and “reinvigorate Cold War myths that the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle was merely an extension of Soviet and Chinese communist expansion.”

The 18-hour documentary is a collection of vignettes that become another form of propaganda because there is little attempt to put what is shown in any overall historical perspective. The documentary comes at a time when the Pentagon has committed to a $65 million 13-year propaganda program to adjust U.S. thinking about what the Vietnamese call the American War.

Almost 60,000 Americans died while killing 4,000,000 Vietnamese. Most of those we killed were civilians we were there to protect. This is the context in which “The Vietnam War” documentary should be viewed.

This story was originally published June 8, 2018 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Vets oppose Emmy for Vietnam documentary."