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Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Geno - 17th July 2009
Before the era of cable news channels, in a time when political polarity had not yet overtaken the news media, Walter Cronkite was the voice most Americans listened to. He has often been regarded as the most trustworthy voice in the news media. And now a word from our president:
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Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - A Black Falcon - 17th July 2009
One of the great news reporters, few have been as good... and when he stated his opposition to the Vietnam War on air in 1968, it was a crucial turning point for the opinions of many Americans.
At least he lived to a good old age... but still, of course it is sad.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Weltall - 18th July 2009
Quote:and when he stated his opposition to the Vietnam War on air in 1968, it was a crucial turning point for the opinions of many Americans.
And a more blatant example of irresponsible television journalism may not exist.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Dark Jaguar - 18th July 2009
Weltall are you aware of the new nixon tapes showing that he himself knew that the war was a lost cause and that his efforts were simply to prolong the war until he was out of office?
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - A Black Falcon - 18th July 2009
Specifically, Walter Cronkite said that the war was unwinnable. He was absolutely correct.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Weltall - 18th July 2009
More specifically, he made this statement during the Tet Offensive, which was a massive military defeat for North Vietnam, yet was misconstrued by Cronkite to be a defeat for American and ARVN forces. It was, at best, entirely inaccurate given the situation, at worst, a case of a journalist unethically grinding a political ax.
The main reason the war became 'unwinnable' was because of misinformation eroding popular support for the war. Militarily, the North's only strength was numbers. Had the war been prosecuted to the fullest, there is little doubt we would have emerged the victors.
Whether or not you want to argue that the war was ever necessary is one thing. I personally don't think it was. But, I definitely do think it was winnable, and I think it was deplorable for Cronkite to cause an alteration to national policy as he did. A journalist reports the news. He does not create it.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - alien space marine - 18th July 2009
Military wise is open to debate.
Politically the Vietnam war was lost, You had no popular support in Vietnam and the South Vietnamese government was seen as a puppet by the Vietnamese even in the south.
The Ho Chi Minh lead Vietnamese revolution was all stirred up by anti colonial sentiment in Vietnam who were sick of the french, The Vietnamese saw the U.S as just another foreign invader trying to reestablish colonial rule in Vietnam.
With the draft and the loss of life, War weariness grew with time in the U.S populous.
Rather then a complete loss, Why didn't they just secure the borderline between north and south, Have results like in Korea were the country is divided in two?
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - A Black Falcon - 18th July 2009
Weltall Wrote:More specifically, he made this statement during the Tet Offensive, which was a massive military defeat for North Vietnam, yet was misconstrued by Cronkite to be a defeat for American and ARVN forces. It was, at best, entirely inaccurate given the situation, at worst, a case of a journalist unethically grinding a political ax.
The main reason the war became 'unwinnable' was because of misinformation eroding popular support for the war. Militarily, the North's only strength was numbers. Had the war been prosecuted to the fullest, there is little doubt we would have emerged the victors.
Whether or not you want to argue that the war was ever necessary is one thing. I personally don't think it was. But, I definitely do think it was winnable, and I think it was deplorable for Cronkite to cause an alteration to national policy as he did. A journalist reports the news. He does not create it.
It's delusions like this that cause the US to get into war after war after war, without ever really learning the right lessons from them. The war was not winnable. The definition of 'winnable' requires an actual path to victory, for one thing; there was no such thing in Vietnam.
First, it was against the will of the people. Had there been an election in South Vietnam at any point between 1945 and 1969, Ho Chi Minh would have won handily over anyone the US propped up in the South. The regime was unpopular and the majority of the people never supported us. As a result, we forced in brutal dictators, because of course OUR murderers are better than theirs because at least they're not commies, right? Ridiculous...
The true first problem was the very serious misunderstanding of East and Southeast Asian politics that the US government made in 1945. Essentially, the American government thought that Asia was like Europe -- Commies were Commies, no matter what. As a result, the second that the Cold War started, they thought that Ho Chi Minh was evil and a brainless Soviet drone. They were completely wrong. Actually, he was a nationalist first. I think a very, VERY strong case could be made that the only reason that North Vietnam, and united Vietnam after it, ended up so strongly Communist, in fact, was BECAUSE of US intervention, not despite it.
You see, in 1945 Ho Chi Minh, who had been a US-backed agent during the war, declared Vietnam's independence from France. The Declaration of Independence he read intentially was very similar to the American Declaraction of Independence, and he was hoping for American support, as so much talk had been made during the war about self-determination and the end of colonialism.
Unfortunately, that talk only applied to Europeans, that is white people. As for the rest of the world, America decided that supporting their European allies' determination to retake their empires was more important than upholding democratic ideals. This was even more true for anyone who called themself any kind of communist or socialist, but in general it applied to all nations (except the Phillipines, which was American territory during the war and we actually let go free shortly afterwards). One result of this was full American support for France's efforts to crush the Vietnamese independence movement. By treaty France was able to retake the southern part of Vietnam, but not the north. The resulting war, mostly American-funded and fought with huge amounts of American weapons and materiel if by French and South Vietnamese troops, lasted until 1954, when France finally gave up and left after the disastrous defeat at Dienbienphu.
For the next decade, the war died down a bit as the two rival Vietnamese states faced off, the South backed by American weapons and the North by Soviet. And this gets back to my earlier point about America radicalizing the Northern government. Initially, the revolutionary government of Vietnam was a coalition of factions, some socialist and some not. The leader, Ho Chi Minh, was of course a nationalist communist, but the government was definitely not all communist-run. However, to fight a long war one needs weapons and materiel. As China was a longtime rival and often subjugator of Vietnam (and by longtime I mean centuries), The only place they could turn to was the Soviets. The natural result over time was a Soviet-aligned government in the North, not as bad as the Soviet Russian one but definitely not democratic.
But what if we had, in 1945, been better judges of the situation, and had supported Ho Chi Minh and other peoples who wanted and were willing to fight for independence over the desires for our European allies to get their colonies back? The same thing could have happened, but most definitely not necessarily. Things could have, and I think most likely would have, turned out much better.
If we assume that events in the 40s happened the same as they did, however, the US had another chance to avoid getting involved in the 1960s. Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower had sent in the "observers", but it was Johnson who really sent in the troops. Why did he do it? One reason was because they had misjudged Ho Chi Minh, just like all the administrations before them, but another was because Johnson, a Democrat, thought he had to prove his toughness in the face of pressure from the right. It can be harder for a Democrat to resist such pressure than a Republican, and the other way around -- see Nixon and China, for example. I think the common assumption that a Democrat could not have done that and politically gotten away with it is a good one. This is one reason Johnson invaded Vietnam. However, he did also believe that not doing it would allow Communism to spread, as part of the old "domino theory" charade that never had any actual truth to it but many people believed, and to hurt the Soviets because of another delusional American belief, the idea that all Communist countries were the same, that is that Moscow controlled them all utterly in every way and they had no independence. This was not true, as we only started to realize after the Sino-Soviet split, but took much longer to fully accept. So, he tried to find an excuse to start a full-fledged war instead of the minor border and intelligence service conflicts between North and South Vietnam in the previous decade.
That excuse was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of 1964, where American ships were supposedly attacked twice by North Vietnamese ships. The second incident never happened, though it took the US government many decades to admit it. The first may have, though the ship was almost certainly providing intelligence support for South Vietnamese attacks on North Vietnam (the US tried to deny it at the time, though this was another lie), which seems like some justification for attacking it despite it being in international waters, though this is of course a controversial point. But the fact is, at least half of the so-called incident sold to the American congress and public was a lie, and the other half was only partially true. And that's a justification for war and massive bombing? Not exactly!
It's exactly this kind of thing that so inflamed the antiwar movement, and has proven to a great many people (such as my parents) to be a lasting memory that you can't ever fully trust the US government, or the military in particular, because they're probably lying to you. And the more you look into the whole Vietnam thing, the more lies you see and the more proof for the rightness of that distrust you get. I could keep going through the years and years of lies on top of lies on top of lies, but I don't want to do that all right now... but the US lied about where it was bombing, who it was bombing, how much it was bombing, whether the bombing had any effect, whether they were winning the war, whether the war was winnable, how many people were being killed, etc, etc, etc.
Some terms -- the NLF (National Liberation Front) is what the Vietcong called themselves. They were the South Vietnamese resistance against the Americans and South Vietnamese government. The NVA is the North Vietnamese Army, and the SVA is its opposite. The NLF was not controlled entirely by the North in the early years of the war, contrary to American belief; it was actually an independent, broad-based organization. As the war continued however the North Vietnamese Communist establishment took more and more control over the NLF, forcing them to follow orders even when they didn't really want to.
Anyway, early in the war America had hopes for bombing and invading the North. However, this was in not too long ruled out for the most part, for China warned the US that if they invaded the north or used nukes, China would get directly involved in Vietnam. America had ignored exactly such a warning in Korea a few decades earlier, and paid dearly for it in the resulting two year long meaningless bloodbath. We didn't want to do that again, particularly because China now had nuclear weapons. So, the US held back on bombing the North a lot of the time and never invaded most of it. Instead, almost all of the troop actions and bombing was on the SOUTH, not the North. That is, we were bombing the country we were "protecting", not the one we were supposedly fighting.
The result of this was the total destruction of the villages and small towns in the South. The constant bombings and raids forced essentially the entire rural population of the South, a large majority of who supported the NLF and not the South Vietnamese government it must be admitted, to abandon their homes for refugee camps. Agricultural production ground to a halt. American planes had to drop their bombs somewhere, though, so they bombed incessantly, and the war was spread to Laos and Cambodia too, destabilizing those nations and, in Cambodia, giving the Khmer Rouge the opportunity to begin their campaign of terror and mass murder. The goal was destroying NVA supply lines, but at least as much damage was done to the countryside of those countries as to actual enemies... and in the case of Cambodia, Nixon didn't even tell the congress that he was doing it, he just bombed the country in secret.
So, to get to the issue at hand, the Tet Offensive. Indeed, you are right, tactically -- the Tet Offensive was a tactical and battlefied disaster. The NVA had ordered the offensive as a general attack by all available NVA and NLF forces, over NLF objection. The NLF was proven right, as the aftermath left it much weaker than it had been before, thanks to all losses from the largely futile attacks. It never regained its strength from before that point, the NVA was more strongly in control after that.
However, this does not mean that had the American people not seriously turned on the war at this point we could have "won". As the fact that the war did continue for years more proves, that was not the case... America won all the battles, sure. But it couldn't win the war, not when the majority of the people were so opposed to our continued presence. How do you 'win' when you and your proxy rulers are hated, you cannot really completely attack the main source of opposition (the North) as much as you want to thanks to the certainty of more Soviet or Chinese involvement if you did that, and more. Even with the South Vietnamese people all in cities or refugee camps and the NLF broken, no signs of "victory" were in sight. Eventually the American government finally realized that, acceded to popular demand, and pulled out the troops.
Essentially, you are buying in to the same theory that Johnson and Nixon both did, as well as Robert McNamara and Henry Kissenger: That bombing a people enough will cause them to break and give in. The Vietnam War is a textbook case proving that this is not true, that people will not necessarily give up just because you bomb them a lot. The Vietnamese didn't, and weren't going to. They had been fighting for 30 years in 1975, they were not going to give up, and winning was impossible. All our actions did was made them hate us more and more as the death toll among the Vietnamese people climbed into the hundreds and hundreds of thousands and then well over a million before it was all over... but despite all the suffering every sign says that they would have kept fighting until we gave up. When you're fighting for freedom it gives you a great deal of purpose and determination... there was little of that on the South Vietnamese side, mostly just American money luring in some people. Of course some people in Vietnam supported America... but when you look at things like how we never allowed an election because we knew we would lose it, you see the true picture. Of course North Vietnam was repressive and autocratic as well, but the South was absolutely no better, and without the war going on far fewer people would be dying.
For instance, when the North Vietnamese army drove into Saigon in 1975, everyone remembers the shots of the desperate crowd of people with ties to the American establishment trying to get onto those few helicopters... but what isn't shown is that elsewhere in the city, huge cheering crowds were welcoming in the NVA troops.
Shortly after the war ended, the new united government started arresting people who had been in the South Vietnamese government and military and sending them to "re-education" camps. However, they also reached out to the United States with an offer to normalize trade relations with us. This would help Vietnam economically recover from the war much more quickly, and would help American businesses as well. They were willing to just forget the whole thing and move on. However, the US was not at all willing to do the same. America can hold a grudge for a long time, and did not want to do anything to help a nation definitely still on our enemies list. So, we implemented a ban on all trade with Vietnam. This American trade blockade crippled Vietnam's economy, as the southern half suddenly was cut off with finality from its overwhelmingly primary source of funding and trade. The result was predictable: Economic collapse. This is what caused the "Boat People" epidemic as floods of people tried to flee Vietnam for just about anywhere else.
The Communist government didn't exactly help matters either, as they implemented a full collectivization program after reunification. Collectivization of agricultures was about as disastrous here as anywhere else, and it was another hit to the nation's economy.
Vietnam had another problem now though, China. Since the Sino-Soviet split had gotten worse by the late 1960s, China and Russia were rivals and Vietnam was on the Russian side of the argument. This angered the Chinese greatly. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia, seeking to stop the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign of terror that had killed a huge percentage of the nation's population. They were successful at this and took over most of the country, but at a price. The Khmer Rouge essentially called on their Chinese allies, and the Chinese used the excuse to, later in 1979, invade northern Vietnam. This was the third and final hot war in Vietnam. It lasted only a short time, but many people died and China's point was made, despite taking some casualties. Both sides did declare victory, however, and the Vietnamese occupation of most of Cambodia continued. America can be presumed to have supported the invasion quietly, and almost all of the Western nations supported the Khmer Rouge's successful efforts to hold on to Cambodia's UN seat all the way until 1993, though the Khmer Rouge would not be fully defeated from their last holdouts until 1998.
It was only the end of the Cold War that brought true resolution. In 1994 the US finally dropped its ban on trade with Vietnam, and the Vietnam Wars can be said to finally have come to an end. The tragedy is, as I've tried to show, the whole thing should never have happened in the first place.
As for Robert McNamara, many years later he finally admitted that the US should never have invaded Vietnam in 1964, and that he thought that Kennedy would have pulled out American troops instead of invading like Johnson did. In the '60s though, he had fully supported the invasion, with "domino theory" as his reasoning.
Walter Cronkite, he realized the folly of the war while it was actually going on. It would have been even better if he had realized it before it even started, as some did, but coming out and actually saying truth to power as he did in 1968 was an incredibly, incredibly brave and exceptional thing to do. He did an amazing thing in that and should be praised for it, as many do and have done.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Dark Jaguar - 18th July 2009
Weltall, did you read what I said? Nixon himself knew the war was unwinnable and planned his entire strategy around simply extending the war until he was out of office so he could blame the next person for losing it.
It's all in those newly discovered tapes.
It doesn't matter if you think the war may have been winnable, if the person in charge of it isn't even trying to win it, it doesn't matter.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - alien space marine - 18th July 2009
Allot of wrongs were done in the cold war by both sides
Bush "reverse domino theory" in Iraq will probably go sour , The its a "puppet state" sentiment is hard to shake.
Nixon sounds like Dick Cheney esque sleaze, The people need to be vocally active to counter such slime balls who slither into office.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Weltall - 18th July 2009
^Tet, and Cronkite's subsequent statement, occurred before Nixon was in office, presumably a few years before these alleged tapes to which you've offered no links or time of creation for reference. Either way, Nixon was not in office when this happened, so what's the point?
Whether or not you agree with the sentiment of what Cronkite said, the fact that he used his position as a journalist to influence public opinion indicates a breach of professional ethics. Again, a journalist is supposed to report the news, not create it.
Again, I do not believe the Vietnam War should have ever happened, but I think that any war becomes vastly more difficult to prosecute when you have internal subversion at play. The media played a large role in making Vietnam 'unwinnable', which makes Cronkite's statement a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - alien space marine - 18th July 2009
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Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Dark Jaguar - 19th July 2009
http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/events/vietnam/pdf/transcript-02.pdf
There they are. I had figured this was common knowledge as they've been around for weeks now.
As for not "making" the news, there is no breech in stating an opinion well grounded in the facts. For example, a reporter who takes the time to point out "creationists are idiots, and here's why" is not breaching any sort of conduct. Creationists ARE idiots and their nonsense doesn't even warrent attention except for the fact that they are trying to get that nonsense into the classroom.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Weltall - 19th July 2009
Would you be so kind as to point me to the page with that specific quote? Specifically, I'd like to know when it was made, because as far as I can tell, this quote isn't likely to possess a shred of relevance to Walter Cronkite or the Tet Offensive.
I believe there is fundamental breach in such matters, and furthermore, you're being circular with your logic. The war, at that point, was well in hand by most accounts and the US/ARVN forces had won a huge tactical victory in the Tet Offensive. It was mis-reported as a defeat. Cronkite's statement about the war being 'unwinnable' was based on this misinformation, and his status as a major trusted media figure was a prime factor in popular opinion turning against the war. The rapid erosion of public support was the primary factor in the war becoming 'unwinnable', as the military had to alter its tactics from prosecuting a war with victory as an aim, to prosecuting the war in such a manner that was as acceptable as possible to a public that would not accept it.
It is therefore disingenuous to state that Cronkite's statement was grounded in fact simply because it eventually became true years later. It would be like me saying "I'm thirty years old", and later claiming that I stated a fact because three years later, I was thirty years old. Cronkite's statement was clearly not true at the time the statement was made, and only became true as a result of what Cronkite said and the effect it had on people. Prior to 1968, public support for Vietnam was cautious but marginally favorable. I don't understand why a strictly logical man such as yourself would consider this statement prescient given the full view of the scenario. It is also entirely unlike your comparison comment. Calling creationists 'idiots' will, at most, polarize whoever cares. What Cronkite did was force a major change in public policy based on misinformation and his own personal agenda. It's unethical and almost criminal. It's shouting FIRE in a theatre of millions, and I believe this to be true even if the statement were one I found fundamentally believable. It would be the equivalent of Pat Robertson's religious idiocy causing significant restraint in scientific advancement.
There did come a point at which victory was not possible for the United States, but the Tet Offensive was not that point until the media decided it was.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - alien space marine - 19th July 2009
Ryan, Your trying to say that Walter Cronkite made you lose Vietnam? I guess every defeat needs a scapegoat be they Jews or crusty old reporters.
Weltall Wrote:Calling creationists 'idiots' will, at most, polarize whoever cares.
call a spade a spade.
![[Image: creationists_gag_from_family_guy_sm.jpg]](http://dstelow.net/img/creationists_gag_from_family_guy_sm.jpg)
![[Image: creationism.gif]](http://www.csicop.org/webmaster/creationism/creationism.gif)
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Sacred Jellybean - 19th July 2009
I thought this guy was already dead.
I like the discussion this has created, though. Good content, here.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - Weltall - 19th July 2009
alien space marine Wrote:Ryan, Your trying to say that Walter Cronkite made you lose Vietnam? I guess every defeat needs a scapegoat be they Jews or crusty old reporters.
No. I'm saying that our military lost the war because it could not fight public opinion and the North Vietnamese armed forces simultaneously, and that Cronkite was a large factor in turning tenuous public support for Vietnam into widespread antagonism. He was certainly a factor in our eventual defeat, though it was the counterculture movement that really sealed our defeat.
Also, I think Creationists who deny evolution are as idiotic as they come. I don't, however, think creationism and evolution must be mutually exclusive. It's just that there is such a religious agenda underlying the whole thing, and religion has no place in scientific discussion.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - lazyfatbum - 20th July 2009
my two cents. When you enter a war, unless the reasoning changes, you follow through and stay the course. You always put your full force behind it, the fact that today our military can pinpoint explosions so that it destroys a building housing terrorists but leaves the school next to it unharmed is amazing, but I believe in bombing the schools as well. You are at war with every man, woman and child (I am a very firm believer in this and I dont care if anyone thinks immoral), especially when you consider that training can begin at a young age, or that children can be used as living bombs by a people that will fight tooth and nail to the very end. If I told you that you're going to fight a lion, you wouldn't bring a muzzle, you'd bring a gun.
What angers me so concerning the Vietnam War is that our people returned home and were ridiculed and demonized. People who put their lives up for grabs and used their bodies to help aid in the support of several nations and peoples returned to a country that essentially hated them. That is because of the anti-war movement and partly because of Cronkite's vocal support of the anti-war movement. Our country tried to step the spread of communism and keep a long standing world enemy from capturing our allies.
I believe there was a peace treaty in the early 70's but no one paid any attention to it. The entire scope of the war was simple: Keep North Vietnam from capturing south Vietnam. In almost a world war with the United States, French (pulled out after like 3 years), Australia, Thailand, New Zealand etc all taking part in the aid of South Vietnam against Republic of China, North Korea, North Vietnam and the Soviet Union. It was a war against ideals with Anti-Communism Vs. Communism and anyone who agreed with either side was essentially joining the effort just for its ideals alone.
Nixon had his agenda, sure. But it was a worthwhile effort and there was a solid reason to support the South. JFK also agreed and supported the war effort and told Americans we have to put our best foot forward and help any ally and burn any foe. He turned it in to the Green Beret war of sorts, an underground movement. But the problem was that no matter what we did to support the South, corruption ran rampant across the south Vietnamese, and for every step we took, we (anti-communism) found ourselves two steps back. But this war was one that had gone on for over a hundred years. When LBJ took over, it wasn't even a priority. It was always a lost cause unless someone was willing to go down in the history books as the triggerman who stopped it.
I dont blame Cronkite for stating his opinions on the war, it could have been an easy war, just wipe out the North like we did to the Japanese, through aggression and fear of destruction, but it became a showpiece. We wanted to rub their noses in it and in the process lost Saigon to the North. If it were the people's war, if we did support it, we would have wiped the North. But the truth is, this hundred year war would have continued after any victory, after any defeat, whether we were involved or not because any communist party would aid the north, and that's what made it unpopular and ridiculous to think there was any war to actually win (hence the references to the middle east's terrorist organizations today), it was a war of ideals.
I fully support any news outlet to have an opinion. It's severely lacking and it's a fact that we are kept in the dark from what is happening. Sometimes, if someone knows what's going on, we should be allowed to hear it. There is always talking heads news gathering, but in conditions of war, we need that opinion to be heard. Especially when the country is split on its own opinion of what to support. Cronkite wasn't wrong, but we should have followed through. There is no reason other than pussyfooting that the south was massacred. Cronkite was one of the best, f not the best in his field.
As far as creationism, anyone who believes anything concerning "Christianity" is oblivious to the truth and regularly fights truth just to uphold their beliefs. I believe in God, I believe he created the universe and he's why there is a constant waltz of space dust forming and swirling with the goal of creating of life. The dynamics of genetics and hereditary, evolution, ecological trial and error, etc are all a part of God because God is the sentience that is a collection of every living thing down to the very energy that holds atoms together that yearns to see tomorrow. "Christianity" is a bullshit theory for faggots created by retards to jackoff the confused. If you want to know what really happened, ask a Jew. If you're looking for a savior, look in the mirror. And if you want to learn about the existence of the universe and how it works, seek the educated.
/rant
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - A Black Falcon - 22nd July 2009
Weltall Wrote:^Tet, and Cronkite's subsequent statement, occurred before Nixon was in office, presumably a few years before these alleged tapes to which you've offered no links or time of creation for reference. Either way, Nixon was not in office when this happened, so what's the point?
Whether or not you agree with the sentiment of what Cronkite said, the fact that he used his position as a journalist to influence public opinion indicates a breach of professional ethics. Again, a journalist is supposed to report the news, not create it.
Again, I do not believe the Vietnam War should have ever happened, but I think that any war becomes vastly more difficult to prosecute when you have internal subversion at play. The media played a large role in making Vietnam 'unwinnable', which makes Cronkite's statement a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oh come on, did you read anything I wrote at all there? I know the post was long, but still... I wrote it for a reason.
In addition to that though, the idea that questioning the government is bad is a favorite right-wing idea, and one that goes against many of America's fundamental values. Questioning authority is why we exist as a nation. Many of America's greatest actions and traditions come from such actions. It's the right that supposedly hates government so much, you'd think that they'd be in favor of questioning it when it was wrong... :)
When something is wrong, seriously wrong, people have a responsibility to say so. That's what Walter Cronkite heroically did. You're right that Tet was a military disaster for the Vietcong (NLF)... but the point is, that didn't ultimately matter. Not just because of us pulling out, that was years later. Because the North proved that they were willing to take the suffering and fight until they won, period. That's exactly what they did, and short of nuking everyone in the country or something, I think that's what was going to happen either way.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - lazyfatbum - 23rd July 2009
If we would have nuked the north in key areas (high damage), it would have scared the shit out of other red supporters and won the south their freedom. Stupid political war, you shall have no victories. Just death.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - alien space marine - 23rd July 2009
lazyfatbum Wrote:If we would have nuked the north in key areas (high damage), it would have scared the shit out of other red supporters and won the south their freedom. Stupid political war, you shall have no victories. Just death.
I think the southern Vietnamese would have been completely disgusted by such a act, Given that many would have relatives in the north who were just annihilated.
You'd make global martyrs for World communism, If you yourself just went about dropping H-bombs on Vietnamese cities you'd become a worst monster in the eyes of the world, It would be politically self defeating a Pyrrhic victory.
Reality is not like "The watchmen movie" , Were a Blue radio active naked man decimates the Viet-kong and wins the war by nuking the north into surrendering.
Walter Cronkite dies at 92 - A Black Falcon - 23rd July 2009
ASM, if our nuclear bombing had gone like our conventional bombing, we'd have been dropping a lot more of them on the south than the north...