Vietnamization [1972] (1972-01-17)

About this film

Ambassador Bunker, WFB begins, "is the diplomat who presided over the great metamorphosis we call Vietnamization. There are those who believe that however sensible the concept is, in fact, what it comes down to is that the United States needed to concoct a grand chimera, under the cover of which to pull away from what we used to refer to as our obligations under the SEATO treaty." As a veteran diplomat (starting with his posting to Argentina by President Truman, and continuing under Republican and Democratic Presidents ever since), Mr. Bunker is well able to turn aside a question so smoothly that you hardly realize he has sidestepped; but once he gets into the subject of the training of the ARVN [Army of the Republic of Viet-Nam], and the intransigence of the North Vietnamese and their Soviet and Chinese backers, he is eloquent. "This war was new to the American experience.... Korea wasn't like this; World War II was not like this.... Therefore, we had to learn to fight this war as we went along, in the hard way. It took some time to come to the realization that there wasn't the military war and the other [political and psychological] war. It was all one war. The thing, I think, th…

Directors & creators

Southern Educational Communications Association

Subjects

public broadcasting, AAPB, Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr., Vietnam War, 1961-1975, United States

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