[Peace-discuss] "The War" by Ken Burns
Karen Medina
kmedina at uiuc.edu
Mon Oct 8 15:38:51 CDT 2007
Mort and Ricky
I suggest you send these "entries" to PBS. Thanks for sharing them with us, but the world at large needs to hear these.
-karen medina
---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:50:56 -0500
>From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] "The War" by Ken Burns
>To: Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>
>Cc: Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
> In the same spirit as that of Ricky, I attach what
> I wrote in my own personal diary, just after seeing
> the Burns series.
>
> Reflections on the Ken Burns War on PBS
>
> Watched all seven episodes, trying to fit what I saw
> there on what I remembered of the “good” war.
> The start was promising, stating that WWII was not a
> good war, but was a necessary war. However, as the
> series progressed I became disappointed. It ended up
> glorifying our battle, our good guys, our guys of
> conscience that had to do their job even if it meant
> killing civilians. Of course, there were scenes of
> the horrors committed by the “Japs” and the
> Nazis, which reinforced the theme that the war was
> fought for moral and humane reasons. But there was
> little analysis of other reasons for the war and why
> we had to bomb cities, destroying them and their
> inhabitants. The worst part, the last episode of the
> series, concerned the bombing of Japan. They made
> the case through prisoners of war and those who
> fought on the brutal Pacific campaigns that if Japan
> had to be invaded, it would be hugely costly in
> American lives, and that the Japanese were fanatic,
> would never surrender. And our prisoners of war in
> Japan would all be killed. Ergo, the bombs had to be
> dropped, Hiroshima and Nagasaki [i.e. the bombing]
> were unfortunate but needed. Nothing was said for
> other motivations for dropping the bomb. No
> questions or analysis, whereas now we know that the
> Japanese would have surrendered if only we had let
> Hirohito remain emperor. Should this not have been
> mentioned? There was no discussion of the racism
> that wars engender, that Japanese or German
> (civilian) lives were as valuable as American ones.
> That Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, … were
> atrocities equivalent to those committed by our
> enemies was never considered. They said Hiroshima
> was a transportation hub, hence a reasonable target!
> They also said we had only two bombs---implying that
> dropping them for demonstration purposes would not
> have been practical (despite the suggestions of
> prominent scientists of Los Alamos that they do just
> that, also not mentioned), and that it would have
> taken many months to fabricate others after
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>
> I was suspicious for the reasons why this series was
> now shown. To support our troops now, veterans day
> soon, to show that despite what they do, they are
> all honorable men? Burns said that it had to be done
> now, because the survivors of the war were dying
> off, and we should document what they went through
> from their own words.
>
> I was left with a feeling of dissonance: Yes, WWII
> may have been necessary—we were attacked—but as
> was graphically illustrated, war makes (too many of)
> its warriors (as well as its civilians) monsters.
> They lose their empathy for others under the stress
> of combat, with their sense of duty to their
> superiors or to support their buddies. We have
> since learned that U.S motives belie the pretended
> good arguments of our leaders. What they care about
> is power, and maintaining a status quo which keeps
> them in power, whatever the costs to human life and
> society. No war or foreign action the U.S. has
> engaged in since WQWII has had any decent excuse. On
> the contrary!
>
> Hence I found it difficult to absorb the messages of
> this TV series, even while I was fascinated with the
> battle scenes, was moved by the personal stories,
> and recalled what life was like on the home front.
>
> On Oct 8, 2007, at 11:08 AM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>
> Interesting series, which at least is good for
> some discussions with coworkers and others - maybe
> even a letter to the editor or two?
> I noticed particularly in the episode about Pearl
> H. what was left unsaid, jarringly, in my view.
> There was 'intelligence' that the Japanese were
> planning some attack somewhere, etc., etc. But
> why? A threat to 'Japanese expansion' - true
> enough, but only half the story, as an
> undisciplined
> observer would notice later in the story about how
> the Pacific war went badly at first, lower
> priority than Europe, etc., etc.
> Along with the Japanese incursions into China and
> abuse of Chinese people, and it seemed to me
> given at least equal emphasis (without actually
> tallying up the air time), the Japanese were
> wiping out *US* bases - in the Philippines, and so
> on - until (remarked with shock and horror)
> "there was not one American base" left in a huge
> strategic Asian/Pacific area.
> That the US had its own imperial designs in the
> Pacific and Asia. Why did the US have bases in,
> e.g., the Philippines? Not a word. The
> question shouldn't be that obscure. Mark Twain
> and other
> famous personalities had been involved in the
> anti-war movement (although sometimes for very
> bad,
> racist reasons) against US invasion and occupation
> of the Philippines (originally in support of a
> popular uprising against their previous Western
> colonial masters, followed by US refusal to leave
> even when asked by those among the locals who had
> supported US intervention - sound familiar?).
> But of course that would put some of Japanese
> propaganda in context: there was some truth to the
> hypocrisy of US talk of "democracy", and so on.
> No, better to focus on Japanese belief that they
> were "a superior race" and other, more comfortable
> thoughts concerning our enemy - not including
> of course how viciously racist the US
> anti-Japanese propaganda itself was.
> Add this to the usual omissions of Western support
> for, and reasons for tolerance of, fascists in
> Europe - replaced by an old Alabama woman's (as in
> a woman of old Alabama) discussion of how
> Americans had developed a dislike of Hitler
> through newsreels - and I have to wonder, were
> there
> no WW2-era leftists still alive to interview?
> Someone with something a little different to
> say?
> No one who fought, say, in the Spanish Civil
> War? There would be an interesting perspective!
>
> Personally I would like to have heard from Bob
> Wahlfeldt, for example ...
> Ricky
> --- "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At 04:41 PM 10/7/2007, Laurie wrote:
>
> Carl,
> While your points have validity, both you and
> John fail to notice one
> significant factor. Ken Burn's work purports
> to be a historical documentary
> while the other works referred to by John are
> anti-war novels. Novels make
> no claim to historic or "factual" accuracy or
> any degree of completeness of
> perspective and coverage; documentaries do
> either implicitly or explicitly.
>
> Naw, I didn't fail to notice it. At the end of
> the day, though, a
> documentary (historical or any other kind) is
> still a "work of art" that
> requires many, many choices on the part of the
> artist/filmmaker. How to
> portray events. What to include and what to
> exclude. In that I'm sure we
> all three agree.
> Ken Burns couldn't make a film about The History
> of Everything. He chose
> to tell the story of World War II from the point
> of view of the ordinary
> soldier, as opposed to the perspective we always
> get, that of the generals
> and the politicians. In that characteristic
> it's a bit like Howard Zinn's
> "The People's History of the United States",
> though of course less
> detailed. Since the ordinary soldier has only
> a limited perspective,
> rather than an overview of all the events taking
> place simultaneously,
> that's the perspective we got in the film. "I
> was there at Normandy, at
> Anzio, at Iwo Jima, at the Battle of the Bulge;
> this is what happened to
> me; here's what it felt like." The hope is
> that a composite view of
> hundreds of ordinary soldiers will give us some
> sense of what World War II
> felt like for those, now dying rapidly, who
> experienced the horror up close
> and personal.
> While we don't get the total historical
> background - that Allied policies
> following German's defeat in World War I led
> inexorably to the rise of the
> Nazis, etc., etc. - I think it would be the rare
> viewer who emerges from
> the documentary thinking that War Is a Good
> Thing. It would be nice,
> perhaps, if those infantry soldiers could, while
> recounting the horrors of
> the Bataan Death March, give us at the same time
> a succinct lecture on the
> Rise of Japanese Hegemony Caused by America's
> 'Discovery' of China in the
> mid-19th Century. But that's another
> documentary for another day.
> Yeah, we do get a certain sense from Burns' film
> that World War II - given
> the unexplained confluence of myriad historical
> events that led up to that
> "day that shall live in infamy", granted - was a
> War That Had to Be Fought,
> relatively speaking. But we still know, at the
> end of the film, that War
> Is a Bad Thing, to be avoided at all costs if
> possible.
>
> As a side note, it appears to be a
> characteristic of Americans to take
> things out of setting or context and treat
> them in isolation as
> atomistically as possible, ignoring the
> interconnected and interrelated
> aspects within the general context historic or
> otherwise.
>
> It may be a characteristic of Americans, but it
> also seems to be a function
> of being human - the quality of existential
> aloneness. What did I do
> earlier this evening, Laurie, and how is that
> going to affect your life in
> the weeks and months to come?
>
> Our esteem for
> immediate gratification is only trumped by our
> lack of historic perspective
> and acknowledgement of interdependence. We
> also have a propensity to reify
> what typically are abstract typifications and
> treat those typifications as
> concrete factual objects and events. Thus
> history becomes an ahistoric and
> acultural series of finite events rather than
> an infinite continuum of
> ongoing processes and phenomena.
>
> Or else it becomes an infinite continuum of
> ongoing processes and phenomena
> which are interpreted in radically different
> ways by different people, as
> different aspects of the continuum are
> emphasized or de-emphasized by said
> individuals. The five blind men and the
> elephant come to mind.
>
> In part, this may stem from the positivist
> philosophy that underlies the scientific
> method and enterprise which the
> Western world has totally embraced and
> popularized as well as the Western
> world's (as exemplified by the US) focus on
> empirical science and practical
> engineering and away from theoretical science
> and analytical interests.
>
> So I guess that five Chinese historians, say,
> would all interpret, say, the
> Cultural Revolution in precisely the same way?
> Or am I missing something?
> John Wason
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-
> bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C.
> G. Estabrook
> Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 3:51 PM
> To: Peace-discuss
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] "The War" by
> Ken Burns
> It was generally asserted that irony was
> over after 9-11, but John it
> seems didn't get the memo.
> He also apparently chooses to ignore the
> strong implication of both
> novels, that the situation that causes the
> protagonist's suffering
> arose
> from a failure of historical and political
> analysis. Each is a strong
> if futile plea that that not happen again.
> However tacit, Trumbo's political lesson was
> so clear that the book was
> removed from publication, probably by Trumbo
> himself (an anarchist who
> joined the US Communist Party during WWII),
> on the eve of US entry into
> the war. (The CPUSA went from a pacifist
> to a pro-war position in the
> summer of 1941, with the German attack on
> the Soviet Union.) A few
> years earlier Remarque had had his German
> citizenship revoked because
> of
> the political implications of his books.
> Burns' apparently apolitical approach is of
> course thoroughly
> political.
> As Mark Twain pointed out, history doesn't
> repeat itself, but it does
> rhyme. --CGE
> John W. wrote:
>
> I've just recently read two anti-war
> novels written many years ago:
> Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, and
> All Quiet on the Western
>
> Front
>
> by Erich Remarque. They too are
> failures, unfortunately, because
>
> they
>
> also don't delve deeply into exquisitely
> detailed historical and
> political analysis, but merely present the
> human effect of war. It's
> appalling, really, that so many authors
> and filmmakers don't
>
> recognize
>
> the obvious necessity of proper, correct
> political analysis.
> John Wason
> At 01:45 PM 10/5/2007, you wrote:
>
> [Burns' account of WWII appears to bear
> as much relation to the
>
> facts
>
> as TV sitcoms usually do to family
> life. Here's a typical critique.
> For a partial corrective, see
> <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/196709--.htm>
> "On the Backgrounds
> of the Pacific War: The Revolutionary
> Pacifism of A.J. Muste." --
>
> CGE]
>
> Critique, "The War" by Ken
> Burns
> Don't know how many readers here spent
> 14 hours over the past couple
> of weeks watching the PBS documentary on
> World War II by Ken Burns.
>
> I
>
> think I have now seen it all -- given
> our local TV's rebroadcasts, I
> think I have pieced in the parts I
> missed initially. I expected so
> much more, and I feel deeply
> disappointed.
> I have three big objections. The First
> is the decision before the
> documentary was really made to avoid or
> eliminate any discussion of
> both politics, political leadership, and
> strategy and the makers of
> strategy which would be the military
> leadership. For the most part
> the documentary managed this, which
> contributes to it's failure.
> Without a political framework virtually
> none of the combat makes all
> that much sense. For it is persons in
> power through political means
> that have the ability to attack this
> today, and something else
> tomorrow -- and there is no way to
> comprehend a war without the
> element of who was in power, and who had
> the political means to
>
> direct
>
> combat. Ken Burns lost this one before
> he began if he made that
> decision early on. (Does one think one
> eventually will be able to
>
> do
>
> the History of the Iraq war without
> really comprehending the nature
>
> of
>
> the Bush Administration?)
> This Documentary was advertised as about
> the impact of the War on
> various local communities -- Luverne
> Minnesota, Waterbury Conn.
> Sacramento Calif, and Mobile Alabama.
> What did we really learn
>
> about
>
> these communities? Well, they all were
> letter writers, and they
> followed the news and they collected
> scrap metal -- but we learned
> little else. Minnesota Public Radio
> talked with some of the Luverne
> Witnesses, and they were disappointed
> that Burns had not included
> their community canning operation.
> They actually replaced
>
> commercial
>
> canned commodities with their efforts.
> Corn, Beans, Beets, Peas,
> Tomatoes, Potatoes, Carrots, -- they
> canned it all, and exchanged
>
> with
>
> other communities who could do peaches
> and cherries further south,
>
> and
>
> they were proud of this
> accomplishment. It got left out. If
> the
> Documentary was to be about the Home
> Front -- this was a huge part
>
> of
>
> it, and they apparently are upset that
> it was dropped from the film.
> Third, in line with the promise that the
> Documentary was to be about
> the home front, I expected it to include
> much more about
>
> sociological
>
> change. The Documentary went out of
> it's way to avoid this. Part
>
> of
>
> this is the timeline used in the film.
> The Period for the war
>
> begins
>
> with Surprise Pearl Harbor, and ends
> with the surrender of Japan,
>
> the
>
> implications of change did not become
> apparent in this timeline. Not
> only does this avoid all the politics,
> and the process by which
> Americans moved toward war from let's
> say their position at the time
> of the fall of France in June, 1940, or
> the Nazi Attack on the
>
> Soviet
>
> Union in June, 1941, to the position of
> probable support (by 66%)
>
> for
>
> war in October, 1941, (last poll before
> Pearl Harbor), it totally
> avoids discussion of the dynamics of
> that change.
> Otherwise, I object to Ken Burns
> periodization. For the vast
>
> majority
>
> of the combatents and the victims, the
> war began in 1939 -- but
>
> Burns
>
> sticks with the American Timeline that
> begins Dec. 7, 1941. I
>
> object
>
> to his failure to comprehend that
> American Generals such as George
> Marshall were convinced that there would
> be another World War as
>
> early
>
> as about 1923, because the conclusion of
> World War One had been so
> flawed, and they saw the seeds of the
> next one in the failure of
>
> peace
>
> making in the wake of the first. Burns
> decision not to insert the
> positions of politicians and Generals
> into the mix because it was
> politics or strategy means that those
> watching his documentary are
> denied both what they knew and
> anticipated.
> Likewise, Burns ended his work at least
> with reference to Europe
>
> with
>
> the surrender, and then a short shot of
> Potsdam. Marshall's
>
> doctrine
>
> was that wars were about politics, and
> that the conclusion of a war
> was about finding a means for fixing the
> politics. on your terms.
>
> that
>
> had caused the war. If you failed at
> that, forget the glory of your
> combat victory. In my mind this is the
> only principle that applies
>
> to
>
> Iraq even at a distance. By not
> dealing with Occupation, and the
> aftermath, Burns essentially blanks out
> the possibility of drawing a
> useful comparison.
> But what really bothers me is the Burns
> Trademark on this totally
> inadequate film. I know all too well
> that these days, High School
> Teachers do not really teach the Civil
> War -- they give the kids
>
> hours
>
> of Burns films on that subject. I fear
> that will happen with this
> latest effort. And this latest effort
> is profoundly off key.
> <http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/10/critique->
>
> the-wa.html>
>
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