I like Roger Ebert a good bit, but his review of Apocalypse Now Redux just underlines all these problems. Like the film, the review just helplessly spews racist garbage.https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/apocalypse-now-redux-2001 …
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Ebert says Kurtz leads his own band of "tribesmen," as if tribes were a thing in Vietnam. It was a heavily urbanized country! they didn't fight with bows and spears.
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Replying to @nberlat
... there were conscripted indigenous who fought with crossbows...
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Replying to @gritmonger
it looks like they hunted with crossbows, which is not exactly the same thing...
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Replying to @nberlat
They fought with them. Had a buddy Vietnam veteran who met and talked with them back then, held one of the crossbows brought back as a trophy by someone else.
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Replying to @gritmonger
Yeah, I've found multiple sources online saying they didn't. When they fought with US troops they gave them weapons and trained them with them, for obvious reasons.https://www.quora.com/Did-soldiers-ever-use-a-compound-bow-as-a-weapon-in-Vietnam …
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Replying to @nberlat
And I'm telling you from the horses mouth three tour 'nam vet who interacted with these people: they were caught in a vice between coastal people and colonialists and forced to fight with what they had.
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Replying to @gritmonger @nberlat
Which meant treetop ambush with silent weapons that were not at all like what you'd think a crossbow would look like.
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Replying to @gritmonger @nberlat
...and the country they lived in was not "heavily urbanized."
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Replying to @gritmonger
most of Vietnam was heavily urbanized. Most reports do not say they fought with crossbows, just like most Americans didn't fight with knives.
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The "urbanization" was mainly refugee peasants flooding into Saigon & other cities as a result of American tactics in the countryside (search & destroy, strategic hamlets etc). It wasn't an urban society the way we normally think of one. Most people were peasant farmers.
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