I’m responding to editorial page editor Greg Jayne’s Sept. 24 column, ” ‘Vietnam War’ lays out hubris of American leadership.”
Using Ken Burns’ revisionist propaganda-laden Vietnam series to discuss the Vietnam War is like using the Harry Potter series to discuss life in a British public school. Both are fiction.
In support of that observation, I refer to my 27-year military career that started in 1959. I flew into Saigon for the first time in late 1961 and was back flying there at the cease-fire in 1973 with nearly 1,000 hours of logged combat flying time along the way. Subsequently, I served on the faculty at the Air Command and Staff College from 1974 until 1977. We conducted research and lectured on the Vietnam conflict from every possible perspective. I spent countless hours researching the “who,” “why” and “how” of the leaders at the time, both military and civilian.
I have struggled with Burns’ polemic, but will watch it to the end. It brings back many memories, just not the memories that Burns would like to fabricate for me. Attempting to extrapolate any meaning from the documentary to current events is a disservice to your readers.
