Body Count

I’ve been watching the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam, and trying not to be completely overcome by shell shock.  I lived through the era, but now seeing twelve or more years of folly and slaughter condensed into 10 episodes of television, is something like having 10 bad acid flashbacks in a row while being repeatedly walloped by a baseball bat.

I keep having to remind myself that things have got better in the years since.  We may still be involved in endless war, but we’re not spending nearly as much of our blood.

My previous documentary was Soviet Storm, a Russian history of the Eastern Front in World War II, released in Russia in 2011.

Comparisons are inevitable.  I wonder what the U.S. would do if we suffered 1.2 million casualties in a single campaign, as the Soviets did in Ukraine in 1941.

At least their war had a happy ending.