Documentary Movie Reviews
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Dear America:
Letters Home from Vietnam (1987)
Rate:
5
Viewed:
3/26
3/26:
The longer Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam went on, the more I didn't care.
At the end, Lieutenant (junior grade) Richard Strandberg said, "One thing worries me...will people want to
hear about it? Or will they want to forget the whole thing happened?" The second part is a reality and has
been so for at least three decades, failing to be taught in schools. That's because the Vietnam War was a
total mistake and shouldn't have happened in the first place.
The documentary fails to explain why the United States decided to intervene in Vietnam. The soldiers trying
to be poignant about what's going on over there? Yeah, sure...wake me up when they start to relate tales
of innocent people they killed. Why do you think the Vietnamese were called "gooks" by them all the time?
Remember when Cambodia and Laos were secretly bombed? They were supposed to be neutral countries!
The My Lai Massacre wasn't an aberration; that kind of thing was being done all the time. People saw everything
on television and were thus outraged, hence the peace protests that rocked the United States for years. The
higher-ups refused to listen until the publication of
The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg changed everything.
When the soldiers came home, many were roundly booed and yelled at before being totally forgotten by society
and ultimately the government.
All in all, Platoon, Hamburger Hill,
and Apocalypse Now are more than enough when it comes to the Vietnam
War.