Richard Botkin is the author of “Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam War Story of Honor and Triumph,” which currently is being made into a full-length documentary. The program’s intent is to change the way the world remembers the Vietnam War simply by telling the truth.
I bought it when it first came out and it is indeed most excellent. The hardback, autographed price from WND now is a steal.
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Thirty-eight years ago today, the war in Vietnam, for Americans, came
to its inglorious, ignominious official conclusion. For many millions
of freedom-loving Vietnamese left behind, the end of the “American War”
would simply be prelude into a longer, near-endless period of darkness
and suffering.
Those of us old enough to recall the date April 30, 1975, will
forever remember those final newscasts from Saigon being overwhelmed by
invading North Vietnamese infantry and armor, images of multitudes
futilely attempting to join the American exodus, shots of U.S. Navy
ships steaming offshore crowded with refugees and flight decks awash in
helicopters being pitched into the abyss of the South China Sea – the
sinking aircraft a metaphor to many for the tremendous waste of American
blood and treasure. And since that dark sunset on that day the wounds
that were the Vietnam War would never quite heal or be remembered in
proper perspective.
Assessing the situation years later it was a long-retired and partially publicly restored Richard Nixon who would give us, arguably, the greatest two-line observation on our experience in Vietnam when he said:
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War.
“It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
We are rapidly losing that generation of men who fought the Vietnam War. With their passing – and in this group are also included the millions of Vietnamese immigrants who came to this country fleeing communist rule – goes the first-person historical accounting and ability to tell the truth, to discuss the egregious historical omissions or rebut the myriad myths, half truths and outright lies regarding the prosecution of the war so pervasively spread and largely unchallenged, lies that are currently left to stand as fact. That history has been authored mostly by folks opposed to America’s involvement in the war, many of whom sat it out in graduate school, avoiding service – people now in control of history departments at universities across the nation and who exercise great influence with the mainstream media.
Assessing the situation years later it was a long-retired and partially publicly restored Richard Nixon who would give us, arguably, the greatest two-line observation on our experience in Vietnam when he said:
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War.
“It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
We are rapidly losing that generation of men who fought the Vietnam War. With their passing – and in this group are also included the millions of Vietnamese immigrants who came to this country fleeing communist rule – goes the first-person historical accounting and ability to tell the truth, to discuss the egregious historical omissions or rebut the myriad myths, half truths and outright lies regarding the prosecution of the war so pervasively spread and largely unchallenged, lies that are currently left to stand as fact. That history has been authored mostly by folks opposed to America’s involvement in the war, many of whom sat it out in graduate school, avoiding service – people now in control of history departments at universities across the nation and who exercise great influence with the mainstream media.
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VN will remain "misremembered" as it is in the interests of the progressive ruling elites that it be remembered that way. The media and the academics will make damn sure any other "memory" disappears behind the Zinn history curtain.
ReplyDeleteVN will remain "misremembered" as it is in the interests of the progressive ruling elites that it be remembered that way. The media and the academics will make damn sure any other "memory" disappears behind the Zinn history curtain.
DeleteWell said.