Watched the first installment of Ken Burns' The Vietnam War

[Warpy]

76. At the time, fairly or unfairly, a lot of Diem's nuttiness was being blamed on his first lady

Diem was a lifelong bachelor. Madame Nhu was the wife of an aide and she's pretty much the one who picked the biggest fight with the Buddhist establishment, something that eventually led in great part to the overthrow of the government in 1963.

It's the fault of a lot of people. DeGaulle and his need for Empire of some sort was part of it. Eisenhower likely sent advisers in to get the rabidly anticommunist Nixon out of his hair. The anticommunist nutbars and military both wanted a proxy war, the anticommunists to give an oblique threat to the mean old commies in Russia and their satellites and the military to test men and new hardware. None of it had a single thing to do with aiding the Vietnamese people or halting the spread of Communism in the region. It rather aided the latter instead of stopping it.

My memory about that horrible war is hazy and more restricted to tear gas, police batons, and riots than the newscasts. I'm not watching the series, the first time around was bad enough.

However, anyone who wasn't there or in the streets here needs to see it. Burns usually does a decent job.