Confronting ghosts of Vietnam
Michael Maclear's new documentary revisits his coverage of Vietnam, drawing parallels to Iraq, GUY DIXON reports
...Maclear shows in his new documentary Vietnam: Ghosts of War, which airs tonight on History Television [in Canada]...
With segments of his old footage from the bombed-out city of Nam Dinh, Maclear also shows the destruction faced by Vietnamese civilians, which the American public was rarely, if ever, shown. He proceeds to draw some parallels between that and Iraq today.
"The 'shock and awe campaign,' the bombing of Baghdad, was to me obscene. And I can't understand the relative lack of outcry from both the media and the public, as if we have become inured to the idea of mass bombing," he argued.
Continually, his argument throughout the documentary is that in underestimating the Vietnamese and by not fully grasping the forces opposing the United States in Iraq today, we simply don't know what we are fighting. And perhaps we never will.
globeandmail.ca
Ghosts of War
Gemini-award winning journalist Michael Maclear returns to Vietnam to tell, for the first time, how his work in the Far East became a personal battle between objectivity and the truth. Maclear’s retrospective is set against the 50th anniversary of the French surrender at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and coincides with the anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq. Maclear recaptures aspects of his numerous wartime visits to Vietnam to draw parallels with the United States in Iraq today.
historytelevision.ca
Michael Maclear's new Vietnam documentary marks two 50th anniversaries
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Maclear's journey back in time and space is chronicled in Vietnam: Ghosts of War, his latest documentary airing Thursday night on History Television.
It proposes an ominous theme, that the combination of military blundering and arrogance that defeated both the French and the Americans in Southeast Asia is in danger of repeating itself in Baghdad now.
"Those are the ghosts, the cycle of needless war which, in my opinion, is what we have in Iraq today," says Maclear, 74, his face as craggy and creased as an old war map. "I just felt there was a need to look back to Vietnam because it had been so totally forgotten and swept under the rug, to at least see if not exact parallels to Iraq, to ask questions that need to be answered."
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"Ever since World War II, American foreign policy has been dominated by firepower, might is right and firepower will prevail," he says. "They simply don't grasp, don't even bother with the nature of the enemy."
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Maclear says it's scary that the world's only remaining superpower has decided to take upon itself the unilateral right to bomb anything it pleases, that the Bush administration feels it is American destiny and choice to correct the world as it sees fit.
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Maclear interviews some of North Vietnam's legendary military heroes, including the aged but still feisty victor of Dien Bien Phu, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and the commander of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Gen. Nguyen Si Dong. They made it clear it was nationalism, not creeping communism, that helped them triumph against overwhelming odds.
"I even asked some of the old generals, 'What do you think when you look at the young people? Is this what you fought for?' They say 'Yes. The chance for the young to be themselves.' "
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