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Anandika Saharan Vietnam War Video Discussion

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Anandika Saharan Vietnam War Video Discussion

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The video discussed shows French colonial rule of Indochina. At first they had  promised building more roads and bridges, but the Vietnam were not pleased. In The Best We Could Do, Thi's parents were raised in between two identities,their vietnamese background and this new French culture. Specifically, a scene shows Bo as a child learning new language and starting to adapt even greater to the French culture. The struggle for finding their identities amidst a whirlpool of cultural influences may have been one of their "unexorcised demons."
Another detail was the American soldiers' orders to kill everything in sight. They were killing the enemy at a ratio of 10 to 1, but the American families at home did not care about the one, they just cared about the 1. This brought to my attention the polarization of these two countries during and after the war. Regardless of all the anti-war riots in America, many still did not understand the magnitude of killing at hand. In the book, as Thi's family came to the US in the "finest city," they were still unhappy and they felt the discrimination and hate because of their vietnamese background. They left Vietnam to survive, to live a better life, but they were still met with hate.
Lastly, the number of troops used was large. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in a fight that was no longer about independence. It was about winning. So many had to face the devastation and grief the war brought. This made me think about Thi's constant reference to death in the book as it influenced her parent's past and created generational trauma.

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Three insights that I gained from watching the video were the aesthetic of Vietnam, the pride of the US and how long it took for Vietnam to gain independence.

The pride of the US is not even brought up within the book. They unecessarily went to war with a country that they at first believed was just a weak country. However, it was made apparent that the US serverely underestimated Vietnam and many lives were lost as a result, 50000 Americans and over 250000 Vietnamese.

The beauty of Vietnam is criminally understated in The Best We Could Do. Within the book, Vietnam's beauty is described but the illustration just doesn't do it justice.

Before watching the video I had little knowledge about just how many countries were claiming control over Vietnam, just one after the other. French control, China, the US, Cambodia and Laos all at one time tried to take over Vietnam. Sometimes one right after the other and I believe that desperation for independence made Vietnamese soldiers fierce fighters.

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1. From watching the video I learned that Vietnam had suffered a lot more than I expected in the war. Many people had lost their families, friends, and homes to this gruesome war. It made me realize how much I didn't know about this and I am glad I got to watch this video and learn more about how this war affected Vietnam.
2. I learned more about the difference between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The North was communist and planned to attack the South villages and towns. Vietcong guerillas and North Vietnamese soldiers had attacked numerous South Vietnam Capitals. The video really explained just how separated the North and South were in Vietnam.
3. The US also hid information from the American public. The information they did spread was also false information. The Vietnam War had lots of publicity and it showed how devastating the effects were to Vietnam. There were high amounts of deaths as well as many people losing their homes due to the attacks.

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1. The French set themselves up for failure in Dien Bien Phu. I do not know much about the Vietnam war but I would like to know more about why the French felt they would win in Dien Bien Phu.
2. The US engaged in the war to show that they were not weak and also stronger than the other countries. But if they did not engage in the war many American lives could have been saved.
3. The US put a lot of American lives in danger by lying to them about how the war was going saying they were about to win. Leading to more American deaths and an unhappy public. The US prioritized its pride over other American lives.

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In the video it says how thousands of refugees fled to the south because they wanted a life away from communism and I thought about how that related to Thi's family because they were living under communism and they came to the United States. Those refugees really suffered much more than I had thought. America really present the war as it really was.

Another similarity I noticed was when in the graphic novel, Bo wanted to move back to the South and it was a good thing anyway because of the land reforms, Bo's grandmother was going to lose her property and then the family could've been killed. The video stated when the land reforms were implemented thousands were killed and I thought about how that could've been their family. Vietnam went through so much suffering, especially the troops.

I thought it was kind of sad how Thi's family traveled to America when they were covering up the full extent of the war. Then Thi read many underrepresented history books about the war.

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-Watching the video I was reminded of how even though it was a drawing, the pictures were very accurate of how the families were. Before the war, the family was happy and it was very beautiful. But as soon as the war started a lot of them were in a famine and not in a stable state. No one was happy and everyone was struggling to survive. The conflict impacted a lot of families
-"The Best We Could Do" is a memoir so therefore it showed a first-person perspective growing up with that type of background. The video was able to show exactly the whole long process of the war. Before the war, the Vietnamese were stable (Thi's parents) but during the Vietnam War it was extremely hard to survive. The family had to eventually migrate to the US. Which is what a lot of the families did.
-The video also emphasized communism and how the US wanted to reject that. Therefore it could possibly result in the Vietnamese being treated wrong in the US even though they migrated. Putting that aside, the US just made everything worse. It was like a huge propaganda scheme or extravaganza.

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- I think due to my education and like my lack of awarness, the first major thing I learned from the video was that Vietnam is still communist. Learning from history and even movies and stuff, I was always under the impression that communism would never work.
- Based on the video, if America decided to not fight in the war, many American lives would be saved. The war kind of seemed unwinnable, as we can see with the fact that Vietnam is still communist and the South fell.
- Many of the people who lived in the North part of Vietnam that fled to avoid the conflict went to the South, but it ended up not even mattering too much. The south fell, leaving many people such as Thi's family lost trying to find a new home and escape their country.

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1. The US engaged in the war to prove their power because if they backed down they would look weak.
2. The US provided a lot of false information to the American public about the state of the war, faking body counts, claiming they were about to win, etc
3. The public did not want the US to be a part of the war. It was the first war that was televised so everyone saw how brutal it was and many soldiers were dying while no progress was made.
4. The north invaded on a New Years holiday, a moment that was mentioned in TBWCD.

These reasons were why most people had strong emotions against Thi and her family.

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1. Pride and confidence played a major role in how the war became a disaster. America would not have fallen if it had withdrawn from Vietnam; it would have only made them appear weak.
2. The Vietnam war would have been more successful if it had a change of leadership. Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam, was a corrupt, incompetent leader who broke the trust his people had in him. The mass persecution of Buddhists in Vietnam only fueled contempt against his government, pushing more people to Ho Chi Minh's cause.
3. Thousands of American and Vietnamese lives would have been saved if the Nixon administration didn't convince the South to back out of the peace talks. Further bombings would have been prevented and both resources and lives would have been saved.

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First was the beauty of the country. The book discusses how the country was and shows us it, but it fails to truly get across the vibrance of the country. The colours of the video help deepen the book, and the settings of the book serve as an addition to the video.
One of the other things about the video was how well it recontextualises and indorms about just how long vietnam was under the control of others. while the book discussed it and the impacts it had, the video helped put it in perspective.
The third is related to the second. the impacts the long era of opression, violence, and change had on the people and the landscape was brought up in the book, but was not as in depth. knowing what was discussed in the book, and applying it to the video, and vice-versa makes the events of both all the more viceral.