22nd July 2009, 7:06 PM
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.