After two episodes, it hasn't really told me anything I didn't already know, although it is put together with the typical Ken Burns class and thoroughness. I wouldn't say it was important to watch it, unless you weren't old enough at the time to understand the events' significance as they were happening.

If you are the type that is convinced we lost because the "military had its hands tied", "we were betrayed", and "traitors sabotaged the war effort, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" then I suppose you will be disappointed. Sad, because if you are of that persuasion, then you really do need to watch it.

The war is important because it created the counter-culture, demolished the myths of American invincibility, self-righteousness and exceptionalism, and because after it was over it could no longer be denied that our government was certainly capable of lying to us, sometimes for no good reason. Viet Nam, even more than Watergate, established that the government could not be trusted and that only a liberal press could keep it honest.

The first episode (which outlines Vietnamese history under the French and Japanese) has convinced me of something I've suspected
all along: we really DID need to go to Viet Nam, we just fought on the wrong side. If we had read the evidence with a little less paranoia, we could have driven a wedge into World Communism and defeated it years earlier than we actually did. As it was, our involvement there only unnecessarily prolonged the Cold War.

Viet Nam, like the Second Gulf War, was a terrific blunder we are still paying the price for. And until we understand that, and why, we will continue making those blunders. I'm certainly not saying I was smart enough to see that truth while it unfolded. I was as wrong about the Domino Theory as I was about the Weapons of Mass Destruction 40 years later. But at least in the latter case, it didn't take me anywhere near as long to catch on.