Various veterans and historians have provided critical reviews of the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick series “The Vietnam War,” and there is a score of points they take issue with, but I will address perhaps the simplest one: Glossing over the conscious and rigorously practiced policy of atrocities by the communist forces, while spotlighting those few committed by United States forces.

The terrorism practiced by the VC was constant and widespread; by the end of 1968, nearly 42,000 citizens of the south had been assassinated or kidnapped, never to be seen again. Teachers, policemen, village chiefs, monks, soldiers, and others were killed – sometimes whole families, sometimes in deeply gruesome ways.