2017
September
21
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 21, 2017
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The Vietnam War has been a difficult conversation for Americans. After its bitter end in 1975, it didn’t crop up much at the dinner table. It took its time to enter textbooks. It became a “syndrome” that evoked aversion to overseas military engagements.

This week, with “The Vietnam War,” Ken Burns and Lynn Novick started a fresh conversation, not just in the United States but globally. The series has been licensed in 43 countries, a record for Burns, and PBS is streaming it in Vietnam, concurrent with its US airing.

The 10 episodes traverse a wide spectrum of emotions: pride and despair, service and sacrifice, protest and distrust. A youngster during that era, I recall vignettes: a friend’s relief at her brother’s high draft number; the bracelets we wore, poignantly engraved with a POW’s name.

Monitor colleague Brad Knickerbocker, who flew combat missions in Vietnam, told me he anticipated the series with curiosity and dread. He notes that one image, of “that rusted nose cone along Ho Chi Minh Trail, might have been one of mine.”

And he reflects: "If only five presidents had had courage to do the right thing, if only somebody had explained the history of Vietnam to me when I was a newly minted naval officer, I might not have become a combatant.” In 1982, he attended the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Amid the press of 400,000 people, he ran into a good friend, a Marine Corps helicopter pilot he hadn't seen since 1965. A photo of a warm embrace speaks to another facet of that conflict as well. 

Now, our five stories for your Thursday.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Axel Schmidt/Reuters
Lead Alternative for Germany candidates Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel attend a news conference in Berlin Sept. 18.
Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard/AP
Pacific Oasis crew members work to remove a fire resistant barrier from a structure at the Clark Creek Organization Campground that was threatened by a wildfire Sept. 19 in Springfield, Ore.
Maya Alleruzzo/AP
Ahmed Ameen Koro, 17, pauses during an interview in the Esyan Camp for internally displaced people in Dahuk, Iraq, April 13, 2017. 'Even here I'm still very afraid,' he says after escaping an Islamic State militant training camp. 'I can't sleep properly because I see them in my dreams.'

Book review


The Monitor's View

AP Photo
In this 2011 photo, North Korean farmers work in a field neare the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, North Korea.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Amit Dave/Reuters
Students pray during a ceremony to mark International Peace Day in Ahmedabad, India, Sept. 21.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow, come back as we take a deeper look at the antifa movement – and whether it means the left is getting more violent.

More issues

2017
September
21
Thursday
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