How the accumulation of atomic weapons precluded any direct confrontation between the USA and Russia. Blight begins with an explanation of the Cold War. Blight, just about full figure, is standing in front of what looks like a huge cyclorama, which is colored a kind of liquid silver. Which, considering what the Allies did to Japan and Germany in 19, is saying something.įrom here Masutani cuts to Blight in an image that seems borrowed from Errol Morris, the godfather of the modern documentary. And the air war that raged over the country was the largest in history. In 1968, right before the Tet Offensive, Lyndon Johnson had committed over half a million ground troops to the conflict. There were 16,000 advisers in Vietnam during Kennedy's last year in office. They are quite familiar to anyone who has read up on this issue. The documentary begins with an aerial view over Vietnam while some statistics are shown to the viewer. Although others have done this to a limited degree, I don't recall anyone else doing it over the expanse of time and multiplicity of instances as Blight and Masutani do here. They then prognosticate what he would have done in Vietnam based upon that record. What they do is examine the number of opportunities President Kennedy had to go to war previously in his administration. The question: If Kennedy had lived, would the Vietnam War have escalated into the colossal disaster it did under President Johnson? Director Koji Masutani and James Blight take a rather unique approach to this question. The film takes this point of view with President John Kennedy and the war in Vietnam. Lee had not invaded the North and met disastrous defeat at Gettysburg? What if Hitler had not overruled his generals and postponed the invasion of Russia until the next April, instead of the delayed June launch in 1941? Would world events have turned out differently? That is, it tries to recast and reshape history as if some definite historical event had not happened. Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived is introduced by historian James Blight as a "What if" film. Part Three, Virtual JFK 3: Gordon Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster Part Two of this essay reviews the book accompanying this film, which has the same title. Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived
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