Press Release from Veterans For Peace
1404 North Broadway St. Louis, MO 63102 (314) 725-6005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, September 18, 2017
For Immediate Release
Contact: Colleen Kelly, 314-761-7428; Mike Ferner, 419-729-7273
VETERANS GROUP REACTS TO FIRST EPISODE OF BURNS/NOVICK VIETNAM SERIES
St. Louis, MO. Veterans For Peace (VFP) members in every U.S. time zone and beyond tuned in to watch the first episode of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s PBS documentary, “The Vietnam War” to see how well it squares with what they know about what the Vietnamese call “the American War in Vietnam.”
The opening scenes and the program as a whole showed that the U.S. has not come very far, in terms of learning from it’s mistakes.
Executive Director, Michael McPhearson, a veteran of the Gulf War, states, “Watching the documentary, I was struck by how little has changed from then to now or gotten worse. In Afghanistan, Iraq and around the globe our government continues to attempt to force whole nations into compliance, using the same failed and depraved strategies used in Vietnam. The documentary portrayal of the U.S. troop buildup in Vietnam shows how quick the U.S. government uses fear of “the other” to justify brutal violence. It is the same fear cultivated in Islamophobic, anti-immigrant and general xenophobic rhetoric used today to pit people against each other at home and to justify wars abroad. This formula of fear and racism used in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is being used in the streets of my city right now to justify the killing of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith and other black and brown people across the country.”
Doug Rawlings, who served in an Army artillery unit in Vietnam from 1969-70, watched the first episode at his home in central Maine and had this to say: “It was certainly engaging,” but Rawlings noted “When the narrator says early on that “America’s involvement in Vietnam…was begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings.’ The U.S. did everything it could to keep Vietnam a French colony and failing that to make it an American one, no matter the cost. Burns and Novick actually show that pretty clearly, yet they still say it was begun in good faith? That just shows how powerful the myth that America is always on the side of the angels.”
Veterans For Peace continues their work on several initiatives in Vietnam and in the U.S. towards accountability for the legacies of the Vietnam War. To see a full list of our projects, visit our Press Kit.
Veterans For Peace members have also re-printed a newspaper, Full Disclosure, that focuses on telling the truth about Vietnam and are distributing it at the many public, community events that surround the documentary.
Veterans For Peace is an international organization made up of military veterans, military family members and allies; accepting veteran members from all branches of service. Our networks are made up of over 120 chapters across the United States and abroad. We are dedicated to building a culture of peace, exposing the true costs of war, and healing the wounds of war.
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Veterans For Peace, 1404 North Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102,
