More on Cronkite

Cliff Kincaid has a report over at AIM about Walter Cronkite.  It turns out there is much more to the story of his liberal, anti-Vietnam War biases and inclinations than I had known.  Check it out.

Comments

[Jim Buie]

Cronkite said in the late 1970s that the Soviet Union was not much of a threat to the U.S. Just a decade later, it collapsed from within. Many of us who visited the USSR during those years observed that Soviet society was no competition for the U.S., except in gymnastics.

Not only did Cronkite prove to be prescient in 1968 when he said the Vietnam War would end in (at best) stalemate, but he accurately assessed the Soviet Union.

The fear-mongering of AIM has been discredited by time.

[Beelzebubba]

four friends with a combined experience of over 160 years of grief asked me to join their Namvet reunion this evening. they were all puzzled by armchair chickenhawks who believe that a government which cannot be trusted with the healthcare, education, welfare and redistribution of the wealth of its citizens could magically become responsible with the most destructive and least efficient use of all human energy, which to them, is war.

[Beelzebubba]

cronkite's name didn't make it to the table. Paul van Riper's and Elsberg's did.

[Joe Guarino]

Jim, many of us would assert that the Soviet Union did not "collapse from within" when it did without some major external, economic pressure placed upon it by Reagan's defense build-up and SDI; and John Paul's efforts in Poland.

We need to recall what the political left was saying and doing at that time. Jimmy Carter said in a presidential debate that his daughter Amy's chief concern was the nuclear buildup-- adopting her viewpoint as his own.

The nuclear freeze movement proliferated during the early 1980's. This was dutifully reported by CBS. There was considerable concern and fear expressed in a highly public way regarding the arms race between the US and the Soviets; and much of that came from the political left. This concern and fear found expression in the nuclear freeze movement.

We now can look back in revisionist fashion, and try to make it appear that the Soviet's demise was inevitable, and that Cronkite was a prophet. But that would be contrary to what was being said and reported back then-- by the media and by the political left.

And again, if the Soviet Union was so weak back then, why would it have been so difficult for the United States to prevail in Vietnam-- a much smaller, less powerful venue? The opponents of South Vietnam could only have been backed by the Red Chinese-- then weaker than the Soviets-- or the Soviet Union themselves. Let me understand. The Soviet Union was doomed to fail-- but we could not prevail over the North Vietnamese, a much less powerful nation?

With respect to the AIM article, I found particularly interesting the factoid that there were 1400 representations of the "dovish" viewpoint during the early 70's on the CBS Evening News; and only 79 representations of the contrary viewpoint. Wow.

[Bubba]

"...they were all puzzled by armchair chickenhawks who believe that a government which cannot be trusted with the healthcare, education, welfare and redistribution of the wealth of its citizens could magically become responsible with the most destructive and least efficient use of all human energy, which to them, is war."

And the pertinent point to the discussion at hand is......?

[Bubba]

"With respect to the AIM article, I found particularly interesting the factoid that there were 1400 representations of the "dovish" viewpoint during the early 70's on the CBS Evening News; and only 79 representations of the contrary viewpoint. Wow."

Imagine that!

But Buie tells us that AIM's "fear-mongering" has been "discredited".

What's HAS been discredited is the indefensible defense of "progressive" talking points full of bad ideas, bad behavior, and bad intent that Buie and pals promote.

What else would we expect, given the well documented history of these people?

After all, there's a pernicious worldview agenda to promote.

[scharrison]

"if the Soviet Union was so weak back then, why would it have been so difficult for the United States to prevail in Vietnam-- a much smaller, less powerful venue?"

Because we weren't (only) fighting influence from external Communist entities, we were fighting against almost a Century of colonial oppression. Pacification worked, but it didn't work. Carpet bombing worked, but it didn't work. No amount of resolve, or patriotism, or fidelity, on the part of the MSM would have changed that, or influenced American soldiers' willingness to fight and win when they were witnessing the reality on the ground themselves every day.

As far as Cronkite, or any other journalist for that matter, being irresponsible in their reporting and "undermining" the war effort, I give you two names: Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova. If they had reported things in Chechnya the way their government wanted, to bolster public support for the war effort and fan the flames of fear, they would be likely be alive today. But the realities of the war itself would be further obscured by the mist of government propaganda.

[Joe Guarino]

Steve, it is not the job of network news to make a judgment as to whether a war is winnable, or to take sides because of various considerations. The job of the network news is to report the news objectively. Democratic processes-- and most notably a couple of Democratic presidents-- had produced the decision to increase our involvement in Vietnam dramatically. It would have been better if there had been a true declaration of war. But it was not Cronkite's place to choose sides and undermine the war effort.

There are ample ways in American society for opinion to be registered, and agendas to be pursued. But the news pages of newspapers, and network news broadcasts that feign objectivity, should not be among them.

We could have prevailed in Vietnam, as we did over the much more powerful Soviet Union. But it would have required defeating the enemy more soundly, and staying there much longer. We did not do those things, in part because of the way that American sentiment had been swayed against our presence in Vietnam by Cronkite and others in the media. The political imperative had become to get out, and the rest is history.

[Bubba]

"The political imperative had become to get out, and the rest is history."

.....which apparently HAS NOT been repeated in Iraq, despite the best efforts of certain people and institutions.

[scharrison]

"But it would have required defeating the enemy more soundly, and staying there much longer."

You gotta know who the enemy is to make that work, Joe. Most of my "mentors" in my Army days were former MACV SF guys, and their time in country made them jumpier than a long-legged frog. Let's just say I learned pretty quickly that sneaking up on them when they were dozing was not a very "wise" form of entertainment. ;/

[cheripickr]

Steve, let me just say, I need to steer clear of you for awhile. I can’t get this image out of my head of you explaining your face paint to your mom across the breakfast table. It’s very disturbing and for some reason I can no longer eat tomatos with my eggs :[

[scharrison]

Imagine how I felt when I saw it in the mirror. :O

And yes, I skipped breakfast that morning...

[Jim Buie]

My friends who went to Vietnam (I was fortunately or unfortunately a little too young to have that experience) came back reporting that it was very hard to tell who the enemy actually was. A U.S. general once said "we have to destroy the village in order to save it." The only way we could have won in Vietnam was to destroy the country in order to save it. We did try -- 250 Hiroshima-equivilant bombings. But the causes of Vietnamese nationalism and shirking off colonial masters (with which we were associated) were too great for us to impose our will on them in a country where guerilla warfare in jungles could go on for decades. Sure, Joe, I suppose we could have put troops with submachine guns on every corner, and occupied every village and turned Vietnam into a police state, in support of an extremely corrupt South Vietnamese government. But in doing so, we would have betrayed our own values even more than we actually did.

The U.S. loss of Vietnam had very little to do with the American media and everything to do with the reality on the ground in Vietnam. After all the books and films that have made this point, I'm kind of amazed that we are still having this debate, and that there are still so many supporters of the supposedly "just cause," the U.S. war in Vietnam, on this blog and in the blogosphere in general.

Kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and there were a number of adults who were still enamored of the great lost cause of the Civil War. They were still bitter over "the war of Northern aggression," arguing that the Confederacy could have and should have won, if only....

Would they ever forget their region's unjust treatment by the Nawthern carpetbaggers and the Yankee media? Hell no, nevah!

There is a neighbor in my native Scotland County who still writes letters to the editor vilifying Abraham Lincoln, that traitor who violated the Constitution and "should have been impeached."

[Jim Buie]

"The job of the network news is to report the news objectively." What is "objectivity"? It is not a word used by the leaders of UNC Journalism School when discussing journalistic values. The values do include "fairness, accuracy, completeness, and detachment."

Absolute objectivity is impossible. You are setting journalists up to meet an impossible standard.

I will say that Fox News and MSNBC trade too often in propaganda, formulaic reporting on half-based "studies." They make hysterical leaps, twist facts to fit a pre-conceived "liberals bad/conservatives good" or vice versa cookie-cutter version of the news. They are circus mirror distorted images of the news and shadows of each other, and a long way from the ideals of Walter Cronkite.

Joe: "It was not Cronkite's place to choose sides and undermine the war effort."

It was Cronkite's DUTY after thoroughly researching and reporting on Vietnam to give us his best judgment, independent from government propaganda. He declared in 1968 that the best we could hope for was a stalemate. Turns out he was overly optimistic - we lost. We would have been better off recognizing that in 1968; instead Nixon dragged the war out another five years, killing tens of thousands more. For what?

Joe, you seem to think that journalists' role is simply to repeat the propaganda of government during war time, and that there's no room for their INDEPENDENT judgment.

[Joe Guarino]

Jim, I would only point out that some of the same things you are saying about Vietnam were also being said about Iraq prior to the surge. It is the difference between playing offense and playing defense.

When you go to war, you go to win. You don't play with one hand tied behind your back. If you want to win, you have to defeat the enemy utterly, without equivocation or apology.

The failure in Vietnam was not ALL due to the media. Johnson and probably certain key military leaders beneath him were also responsible to a large extent. Nixon's later political weakness and demise due to Watergate played a role. But the media shared its own unique, ample part of the blame.

And the media did similar things in Iraq that it did in Vietnam. That has been very unfortunate also. We are winning in Iraq, unless Obama grabs defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Joe Guarino]

Jim, it was not Cronkite's job to give us his judgment. It was his job to report the news without slanting it. He failed in that regard. As I noted previously, there are places for commentary and opinion in our media-- but the network news is not one of them, regardless of what any school of journalism might say.

I do think they have a patriotic duty to want our nation to win when we are at war, and to remain determined toward that end. If they do some objective research that brings to light better strategies for doing so, and have some constructive suggestions toward that end to be tested before public opinion, then by all means bring them to light in the opinion pages and opinion journals. But don't wallow in defeatism during the network news. If we had listened to the media's drumbeat in Iraq, there would have been no surge.

The political decision to go to war is made through democratic processes. Network news ought not undermine those decisions once they have been made. (The irony, of course, is that the media probably helped propel the Kennedy/Johnson political victories. The media loved Kennedy, as it does Obama.).

[Jim Buie]

The collapse of the Soviet Union is complicated, and no serious analyst believes it can be summed up as the work of Reagan, John Paul, and Maggie Thatcher. I remember reading a book in 1978, during the Carter years, by a Newsweek correspondent called "Decline of an Empire" predicting the USSR's breakup.

I have Russian friends who scoff at the notion that Reagan was responsible for the Soviet Union's collapse. They consider it as preposterous as suggesting that a Russian leader or Russian policy was responsible for great political upheaval in the U.S.A. It's extremely egocentric thinking on the part of Americans.

That said, Reagan's policies may have helped hasten the USSR's collapse. He ultimately outdid the nuclear freeze movement by calling, with Gorbachev, for outright disarmament of the two superpowers.

AIM: "there were 1400 representations of the "dovish" viewpoint during the early 70's on the CBS Evening News; and only 79 representations of the contrary viewpoint."

AIM's long history of grinding ideological axes makes its numbers suspect. If CBS News devoted time to the dovish viewpoints of Abbie Hoffman, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, was that advantageous to the mainstream anti-war movement? Of course not.

If Cronkite were truly in the pocket of the anti-war movement and the Democrats, he did an absolutely horrible job of serving as their propagandists. They were deeply divided throughout the early '70s. George McGovern lost in a historic landslide to a generally unlikeable Richard Nixon.

If Cronkite couldn't do any better than that for the liberals who you seem to believe were his bosses, he should have been axed.

Surely if Cronkite were truly the water boy for the Democrats and the anti-war movement, he would have papered over those divisions and let the Dems present a strong, united front in order to beat Richard Nixon. For all Cronkite's supposed power to turn the American people into peace doves, the hawkish Nixon won the 1972 election in an overwhelming landslide.

[Jim Buie]

Joe, what would "victory" in Vietnam have looked like, given the near-complete corruption of the South Vietnamese government, which did not have public support?

[Joe Guarino]

Jim, Cronkite and the network news programs had near absolute power back then in shaping whatever message it wanted to impart. The fairness doctrine was in effect, but it did not apply to them in practical terms. They were free to slant as they saw fit (as they still are). They had little accountability because the media then acted as a monolith swaying opinions in a certain direction (as it does today, but to a lesser extent).

Cronkite's message was out of the American mainstream; but it was sufficiently damaging that it helped create massive societal divisions and sow disunity.

Again, I am having a bit of difficulty squaring your description of the then-inherent weakness of the Soviets-- and the putative inevitability of its collapse-- and the premise that we could not beat the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Those two assertions seem almost mutually exclusive to me.

"Victory" in Vietnam would have been similar to what was achieved in South Korea-- the survival of the non-communist South Vietnam nation allied to the United States, and a long-term United States presence. If that meant all-out war against North Vietnam or any other unfriendly nation in southeast Asia, then so be it. Again, the decision to ally with and dramatically increase support for South Vietnam was made by Kennedy and Johnson. The question then should have been how best to follow through on that commitment, and how to achieve victory.

Again, the inevitability of the collapse of the Soviets was not a part of what the nuclear freeze movement was preaching back then. Even Gorbachev and his former KGB people gave Reagan credit for dramatically hastening the demise of the Soviet Union. And the Pope's role, which was huge, cannot be discounted. Those contributions were not even remotely regarded as automatic during the late 1970's. In fact, many Americans felt we were "losing" to the Soviets at that time.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was partially due to the failure of socialism. It was difficult to be a world power, have a competitive economy, provide for its people and have a socialistic economy simultaneously. Reagan and the Pope gave them a vigorous push over the edge.

In retrospect, again, it seems unusual that our victory over the Soviets was inevitable... but we could not beat the North Vietnamese?

[cheripicker]

The Buie knife vs the Guarino Stiletto. This is good stuff!

[Bubba]

The Buie knife is the type you getprewrapped, with a napkin, fork, and condiments in a box lunch-- cheap plastic.

So are his talking points.

They're both generally useless, and are broken with little effort.

[Jim Buie]

Joe: "Cronkite and the network news programs had near absolute power back then in shaping whatever message it wanted to impart."

You exaggerate media power to absurd levels. Surely the President of the United States had more power to set the agenda than Walter Cronkite. The 25 minutes a night of nightly TV news might feature a couple of minutes on Vietnam, hardly enough to completely manipulate public opinion in one direction. As Cronkite said modestly, his news program was little more than a headline service.

Television, radio and print media offered very diverse viewpoints on the Vietnam war, reflecting divisions within society, letting the people make their own decision about the efficacy of the war. I must say that reports of soldiers coming back from Vietnam and telling their families and friends that they couldn't tell who the enemy in Vietnam actually was had more of an impact than Walter Cronkite.

In this format, we are inevitably just scratching the surface on topics on which many books have been written and many films and documentaries have been produced. I am not aware of any books, films or documentaries on Vietnam who blame the failure of the U.S. effort mostly on Cronkite and the media, or that offer a cogent analysis on how Vietnam could have and should have turned out like Korea, were it not for the "liberal media" and the peace movement. Perhaps you can offer some in-depth sources that support your highly dubious thesis.

[Jim Buie]

I'm glad you consider a Korea a success, given that, at the time, many conservatives blamed Truman for being willing to fight to a draw, rather than conquer North Korea, as MacArthur wanted to do!

The two wars were fundamentally different. Korea was a traditional war of pitched battles involving armies in uniforms facing off against each other on a battlefield. The Vietnam War was a guerilla war in which we mainly fought an invisible enemy who did not wear uniforms and thus could not be identified and confronted easily. Moreover, the jungle terrain of Vietnam created difficulties that did not exist in far more arid Korea.

At the time of Vietnam, we did not know how to fight guerilla wars. We did know how to fight conventional wars, like World War II and Korea.

The current wisdom about guerilla wars, as set forth by the likes of General Petraeus, is that you can only win them if you have the vast majority of the civilian population behind you, and winning their hearts and minds is more fundamental than winning battles. This may just be another way of saying we didn't know how to fight guerilla wars then, but I think the bulk of evidence suggests that we and our allies in the Government of South Vietnam lacked the solid support from the civilian population that is needed to defeat guerillas.

The Korean War was no model for Vietnam. It was relatively quick -- it started in 1950 when the North invaded the South, and an armistice was reached in 1953. The South Korean government and culture was strong enough to resist the Northern invasion. You didn't have the U.S associated with colonialism and suppressing nationalism, and therefore resented by the people of the South.

The Vietnam War was first and foremost a war against colonialism, and a war for national independence. Ho Chi Minh started the nationalist liberation movement in 1941 to resist French colonialism.

The French warned the U.S. after their 1954 defeat that the U.S. would be foolish to get embroiled in the Vietnam quagmire. They warned us again in 2002 that we would be foolish to get involved in an Iraq quagmire.

Arrogant, foolish and narrow-minded Americans scoffed at the French wisdom in both cases.

[Jim Buie]

Joe,

Instead of repeating shallow doctrinaire spin about Reagan's being completely responsible for the end of the Cold War, take a look at an insider's account, in the book "Reagan and Gorbachev." The truth is much more interesting than the spin. Reagan himself said Gorbachev was far more responsible for the Cold War's end than he was:

http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/0801russia_talbott.aspx

[Joe Guarino]

Jim, the network news back in those days had enormous power. How quickly we forget! There were so few sources for national and international news. That is still true today, but to a lesser extent.

Back then, America was putting men on the moon. I simply don't accept that we would have been unable to figure out how to fight guerilla warfare. With time, we could have gained the trust of more locals through various means.

Some narrow thinking likely predominated back then among those making key decisions under Johnson-- including Johnson himself; but later Nixon, when he was effective, was able to stabilize things, turn the tide and force the peace process. We just did not hold it together, in large part because of public opinion.

With respect to Reagan, I think that the Soviet's economic weakness set the stage for Gorbachev's opening things up; but there is little doubt that Reagan and the Pope hastened things dramatically from the standpoint of the empire imploding. Yes, of course, Gorbachev was a big part of the mix, but the external pressure on the Soviet Union-- economically and militarily-- was also critical. But again, if the Soviet Union was so weak, how could the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong been so strong that they must be regarded in retrospect as unbeatable?

My suggestion was not that the Korean War was precisely the same war as the Vietnam War; but merely that a comparable outcome would have been acceptable. We had to stay in Korea an awful long time after the war was over to keep things stable. That would have been true in Vietnam as well, and it will be true in Iraq. But in Vietnam, the nation's resolve was broken unnecessarily. Fortunately, with Reagan's ascendency, the march of aggressive expansion of international communism was halted in its tracks. But we did not even remotely know that in the late '60's through mid-70's.

The question of whether we should have initiated involvement in Vietnam is an entirely different question. That is not the issue here. The issue is how the media should go about reporting once the decision has already been made to go to war. Cronkite failed in that regard.

At this point, I am out of this conversation, which I think we have probably exhausted.

[Jim Buie]

Joe: "Fortunately, with Reagan's ascendency, the march of aggressive expansion of international communism was halted in its tracks."

Propaganda. "The march of international communism" is an old, outdated paradigm that should have ended in the 1950s with the Sino-Soviet split. National interest was and is a far more important motivator and influence than communist dogma. If the Soviet Union still existed, no doubt ardent anti-communists in this country would be pointing fearfully to the relatively recent Russian invasions of Chechnya, Georgia and the gas war with Ukraine as evidence that we need to relaunch the Cold War and the arms race. But since such aggression is not seen as part of the "march of international communism," most people in this country don't really care and aren't paying attention.

Joe, over your break I suggest you update your paradigms for looking at the world since the Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan campaigns. Accusing Obama of "communism," saying the American Medical Association supports "socialized medicine," Walter Cronkite was guilty of "liberal media bias" and misreported the just cause of war in Vietnam that should have lasted many years longer; advocating restrictions on press freedoms and very personal, individual choice on abortion and gay marriage -- these reactionary positions seeking to turn the clock back instead of forward are unlikely to resonate with people under the age of 50 and build support for a new conservative movement or revitalize the Republican Party.

For some good summer reading, I recommend Andrew Sullivan's book, "The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom and the Future of the Right"

http://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Soul-Fundamentalism-Freedom-Future/dp/0060934379/ref=ed_oe_p/102-6416517-9208928

[Joe Guarino]

Bubba requested that I post the following on his behalf:

"Ho Chi Minh started the nationalist liberation movement in 1941 to resist French colonialism."

Ho did no such thing.

Read and learn:

http://countrystudies.us/vietnam/17.htm

More:

http://levantrung.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/the-vietnam-war-by-dr-nguyen-gia-tien-md/

"Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communists in fact had transformed an independence war against French colonialism first into an international conflict and then steered it towards a 'class struggle' to serve international Communism.

All those losses of human lives and time and the destruction of the country had no other purpose than substituting “white colonialism” with 'red colonialism' in North Vietnam. The result is, in 1954, after the Geneva Agreement which divided the country in North and South Vietnam, a massive exodus from the North to the South of a million refugees (they could be said to have 'voted with their feet') fleeing from Communism ."

"All those losses of human lives and time and the destruction of the country had no other purpose than substituting “white colonialism” with “red colonialism” in North Vietnam. The result is, in 1954, after the Geneva Agreement which divided the country in North and South Vietnam, a massive exodus from the North to the South of a million refugees (they could be said to have 'voted with theirs feet') fleeing from Communism."

Ho and his cohorts turned the long existent Vietnamese nationalist movement to serve his commitment to serve a certain political, social, and economic worldview. The saintly “Uncle Ho” as father of his country is an absurd concoction of Stalin’s Useful Idiot gang.

Your facts are as wrong as your agenda.

The constant drumbeat of "progressive" revisionism is obnoxious.

You're just flat out wrong on this entire topic.

[Jim Buie]

Ok, so you link to a South Vietnamese blogger (probably not in country) who has a different view of Vietnamese history and a tragic view of Vietnam today. You guys should work with him to relaunch the Vietnam War, since you've learned how to win a guerilla war, and run a GOP presidential candidate in 2012 to redeem liberal America's betrayal of Vietnam. That's sure to win a lot of support -- you've got the Internet now to make your case, so the "liberal media" can no longer censor your cogent arguments. Go for it!

This is not too different from the neocon Bush aides who listened to the Iraqi ex-pat Chalabi for a decade and just thought that after the toppling of Saddam they could turn Iraq over to him:

Bush's Key Advisors Spent Decade Pressing for Saddam's Ouster
http://jimbuie.blogs.com/journal/2004/04/bushs_key_advis.html

My source for the statement re Ho Chi Minh was this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Background_to_1949

That Ho shrewdly sought to merge his ruthless communist ideology with the Vietnamese liberation, anti-colonialist, and nationalist movements is beyond dispute. No, he was not "saintly Uncle Ho" and I never said he was -- he was a murderous Stalinist, no doubt about it. The Vietnamese people suffered enormously under Ho and his successors.

But that does not mean the U.S. (with its bombs) had the power to determine the outcome of the Vietnamese civil war, any more than another country could have or should have determined the outcome of the U.S. civil war.

[scharrison]

"Ho and his cohorts turned the long existent Vietnamese nationalist movement to serve his commitment to serve a certain political, social, and economic worldview. The saintly “Uncle Ho” as father of his country is an absurd concoction of Stalin’s Useful Idiot gang."

Flipping over to the next page from your Country Studies link:

http://countrystudies.us/vietnam/18.htm

"In 1919 he attempted to meet with United States President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference in order to present a proposal for Vietnam's independence, but he was turned away and the proposal was never officially acknowledged. During his stay in Paris, Ho was greatly influenced by Marxist-Leninist literature, particularly Lenin's Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (1920), and in 1920 he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He read, wrote, and spoke widely on Indochina's problems before moving to Moscow in 1923 and attending the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, also called the Comintern, in 1924."

We ignored Ho at the end of WWI, and then we ignored him again at the end of WWII, even though our troops fought alongside the Vietminh soldiers against the Japanese.

We may have defeated the British to gain our independence, but we've never outgrown the colonial mindset we inherited from them.

[cheripicker]

Good as it was, this topic has been beat to death and squeezed of its relevance 40 years later compared to other things going on now, like other wars. So let’s move on to that topic. Other things being equal, why is it that the press and liberals in general (excuse the redundancy), who can inexhaustibly bash any war effort for years no matter how far in the past if they have a whiff of an argument in their favor, are completely ignoring the unfolding outcome of a war just concluding? (as if I don't know the answer.) All the while veiling their disdain for American success with bullsxxt self-important claims to “objective reality”.

I mean you have to DIG to find anything about the Iraq war today. No such problem when they were trying desperately to proclaim it lost, such as Cronkite did Vietnam. As we go on and on about Vietnam, are there somehow suddenly no lessons to be learned from our failure to cave in to defeatists and partisan media like we did back then in a war that is proving ultimately winnable? Since we caved then then I guess we’ll never be able to settle the debate on whether Vietnam was winnable, but uncomfortably for some, we will here. So why don’t we move on from the what-if to the what is? Here’s a reasonable starting point.

http://jimbuie.blogs.com/journal/2009/07/has-the-us-won-the-war-in-iraq.html

Sorry, you spineless Harry Reids. Try as you did to emulate his cut-and-run playbook, you were no Cronkites, and just couldn't quite pull it off this time. And you couldn’t be more disappointed that Bush’s steadfastness in spite of you proved the correct course, and even worse, that we just might have done something good for the Iraqis , and most amazingly without stealing all their oil!
This Bud’s for you, Joe. Hope you’re grinning on a beach somewhere. Would you consider letting me guest host? I’ll keep it clean…honest.

[Joe Guarino]

Cheripicker, some great comments. Please call or e-mail if you are serious about the desire to guest host.

[Jim Buie]

CP,

Being intellectually honest and not a dogmatist, yes, I asked the question, "Has the U.S. won the war in Iraq?" And I certainly hope we have won it.

But that is a very different question than "was the Iraq war worth it?" Worth the "investment" or expenditure of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, not to mention American lives? It will be a very long time, if ever, before we will be able to say we got a reasonable return on our investment.

Will we ever know how many terrorists were bred in our war in Iraq? Aside from the physical destruction we can estimate and physical casualties we can count, will we ever know how many soldiers and men, women and children have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder at our hands?

[cheripicker]

But imagine what the return on investment would be if we had cut and run when the General Betray-us crowd wanted us to. There were a hell of a lot of you and you know who you are. What a national post-traumatic stress syndrome that would have created. Obama should be grateful Bush created the conditions for which his "withdraw-by-X-date irrespective-of-goals-achieved" doctrine just might not make him look as absolutely reckless and amateurish as it rightfully should. Do you think he, or any other BDS sufferer is grateful?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syndrome

[Bubba]

Ho spent almost as many years OUTSIDE Viet Nam as he did in country. His main responsibility was to create agitation intended to topple established governments to replaced by Communist governments. Funding for these efforts came through the puppetmasters in Moscow and Beijing.

Here is more perspective from Quynh Duo, who fled her native land to Australia after the communist takeover in 1975:

(NB: Footnotes can be found at the subsequent link.)

"It is my honour to be here with Perspectives on World History and Current Events. Many prominent speakers were invited to your previous functions and so I do have reservations as to whether I'm up to the task. However I will try my best.

I share with Perspectives on World History and Current Events the worthy aspiration to aim for unique perspectives in world events, to go behind the news, to not take what is on offer by the media as gospel.

***I came to that point of view from my own dissatisfaction, to put it mildly, of the way the Vietnam War was and still is wrongly projected and understood by some influential people in the Western media.****"

(NB: And of course from non-objective "progressive" bloggers intent on keeping their revisionist history intact.)

"I'm here to share with you the other side of the story and an updated account about Vietnam, the Vietnam that I know. Many public figures have drawn analogies between the Vietnam War and the current Iraq situation. Before making comparison, before drawing lessons about the Vietnam War in any meaningful way, I think it is important to understand the Vietnam War from a factual and up to date perspective.

The Opposition leader Mr Mark Latham recently referred to Vietnam when articulating his Iraq policy.

He said we got into the Vietnam War to prevent communism spreading, but it turned out to be a civil war involving nationalists who wanted unification.

He echoed Jim Cairns, the Labor leader of the anti-Vietnam War Moratorium movement during the '60s.

The whole of the anti-Vietnam War movement sprang from the belief that the Vietnam War was essentially a national revolutionary movement against the South Vietnamese regime, perceived by them as unpopular, not one fomented or directed by the communist North which, in turn, was being instructed by communist China.

Well, the anti-war protesters got their facts wrong. Mr Jim Cairns was wrong then. Mr Latham is wrong now.

The Vietnam War was about preventing communism from spreading. The Vietnam War was fomented by the communist North. The communist North was instructed and abetted by communist China and supported by the rest of the communist bloc.

This is not just me saying this. This is what the Communist Party of Vietnam's website says. What does it say? Allow me to quote from the Communist Party of Vietnam's official biography on Ho Chi Minh:

'Ho Chi Minh . . . felt the need for active propaganda and organizational work in order to step up the revolutionary movement in colonial countries, including Vietnam. He deemed it his task to spread communist doctrine in Asia in general and in Indochina particularly.'

In its internal party directive, the Chinese communist Party declared their task:

'to assist in every possible way the Communist parties and people in all oppressed nations in Asia to win their liberation

That's why from 1950 to 1978, China gave North Vietnam at least 15 to 20 billion US dollars in economic aid, and sent at least 300,000 military and other personnel during the height of the Vietnam War. The famous battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was fought largely with Chinese weapons and under Chinese direction.

The Soviet Union poured billions of rubles into Vietnam. . . During 1965-1975 military aid was central, and economic aid was geared entirely to the war effort. By the 1970s Soviet aid amounted to $1 billion or more annually, without which the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) could not have continued the war.'

In his autobiography, Lee Kuan Yew says Singapore and other Asian countries were saved from communism by the Vietnam War:

'Although American intervention failed in Vietnam, it bought time for the rest of Southeast Asia. In 1965, when the US military moved massively into South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines faced internal threats from armed communist insurgencies . . . and the communist underground was still active in Singapore. . . America's action [in Vietnam] enabled non-communist Southeast Asia to put their own houses in order. By 1975, they were in better shape to stand up to the communists. Had there been no US intervention, the will of these countries to resist them would have melted and Southeast Asia would most likely have gone communist. The prosperous emerging market economies of ASEAN were nurtured during the Vietnam War years.'

*****Time and again, events in Vietnamese history proved that Ho and his communist cohorts only used the patriotic feelings of the Vietnamese people to further their own ends.*****

http://www.pwhce.org/textvnhr.html

We've already addressed the canards about Viet Nam being unwinnable that Buie insists on regurgitating.

Perhaps we ought to examine in more detail the old, tired, worn-out lies about "creating more terrorists in Iraq" and other related nonsense.

On the other hand, perhaps we shouldn't even bother.

When we successfully refute every bit of the "progressive" garbage these people have put up over the years, the standard response is to ignore it, or deflect it, or to run around with their fingers in their ears singing "la la la la la! we can't HEAR you" at the top of their lungs, as childish people everywhere tend to do when confronted with real inconvenient truths.

[Joe Guarino]

Bubba, that is some great information you posted. I think it is partially from learning the lessons of Vietnam that we were able to do better in turning the situation around in Iraq. And two of the lessons are that you can't succumb to negative public opinion partially engendered by the media; and you need to be persistent in consolidating any gains you have made militarily.

[Jim Buie]

The biggest "inconvenient truth" you have yet to confront, Bubba, is that Vietnam today is thriving -- even embracing a form of capitalism. Kind of makes you wonder what the hell we were fighting for, doesn't it? Vietnam today is far better off than it would be if you were successful in perpetuating American involvement in the Vietnamese civil war for decades, killing hundreds of thousands more and destroying the country even more in order to save it from communism. Look at how the Vietnamese and the Chinese have flexed from communist dogma.

[Bubba]

You're not doing so well with your little line of standard Libthink if you need to avoid discussing the actual facts of the matter, Buie.

Are you sure you want to continue?

I've only just begun to provide the truth that refutes your discredited talking points.

On a personal note, this issue is very important to me.

When I returned home from active duty service in 1972, people like Buie had almost convinced me that my country was evil, and that the cause I served was evil, and that , indeed I was evil for being a part of all that.

It took me a long time to find the truth, and to see that the propaganda floated back then, extending through today from people like Buie, were the real evils.

Lies, distortions, and political pandering like the kind we've seen here from the "progressive" element are not only lacking in academic and intellectual integrity, they can be classified as the REAL evil about the Viet Nam and the Iraq wars.

I have a moral and ethical obligation to confront it every time it rears its ugly head.

[cheripickr]

So the fact that they have moved in the direction of capitalism since our efforts, and you consider that a good thing, makes our helping them in that regard against two giant behemoths actively supporting the opposite outcome, a bad thing . And the fact that....

"from 1950 to 1978, China gave North Vietnam at least 15 to 20 billion US dollars in economic aid, and sent at least 300,000 military and other personnel during the height of the Vietnam War.
"The Soviet Union poured billions of rubles into Vietnam. . . During 1965-1975 military aid was central, and economic aid was geared entirely to the war effort. By the 1970s Soviet aid amounted to $1 billion or more annually, without which the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) could not have continued the war.'",

......actually worked against those two countries' aims, as our support did, and if we had just stayed out of it, everything would have just worked out all by itself. Right! I can see your logic in hindsight. And I'm sure that should have been crystal clear and logical to any reasoning person back then. If we, at the time, had only known communism's natural history of eventual rot from within, we would have stayed away. But then again we would also have known there was no need for the cold war at all. Make that argument if you wish, but I personally can't hold us to such a crystal ball-in-hindsight standard.

[Bubba]

Here's another perspective on "thriving" Viet Nam under those kindly grandnephews of Uncle Ho:

"The press may clash with the leadership, as the editors of Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre did in May, when two of their reporters were arrested for covering a corruption story too aggressively. But they must also obey Vietnam's Press Law, which forbids publishing 'contents opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and undermining the entire people's unity bloc.'

The government determines what is 'in accordance with the interests of the country.' Editors meet regularly with representatives of the state's Ideology Committee to discuss which stories the government wants emphasized and which are off-limits.

The country's press law is scheduled for revision in 2009 to cope with the integration of business and media, but government officials said media organs are not to be private businesses."

...and:

"Vietnamese filmmakers, as well as artists and songwriters, must still submit their work to censors for review, putting local artists at a disadvantage.

'We face the censorship issue in many different layers, down to the bottom layer, which is that Vietnamese artists have a kind of psychological sickness of self-censorship,' said artist and curator Tran Luong. 'In order to survive, you become dumb.'

Luong said the major problem is the lack of legal transparency. 'It's a very unclear environment with the law, and everything is very mysterious. Every official layer can show their own regulation and make you explain your work.'

Artists said government officials still took a simplistic, didactic view of the arts, preferring they serve as moral or political instruction - in short, propaganda.

Tuyen Giao magazine agrees, judging by one article on the first day of its website: 'There are different levels of intellectuals but all of them have a common ideal: serving the country and catering to the people,' it said.

Such propagandistic attitudes 'sneak into every little layer, into the smallest details' of Vietnamese culture, Luong said. 'It's very interesting. Very ugly, but also very interesting.'"

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/features/article_1418954.php/In_Vietnam_Propaganda_dares_speak_its_name

[Jim Buie]

LOL, Bubba. You live in the past. My "standard libthink" re Vietnam was expressed by President George W. Bush when he visited Vietnam, both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, in 2006:

"The President said he fully understood Vietnam's heart-breaking past caused by the US and was moved to know that Vietnam has put aside the past and look forward to the future....(he) praised Vietnam for its dynamic socio-economic development and expressed his wish that bilateral ties would be further developed."

He also expanded development assistance to Vietnam, and congratulated Vietnam on its admission to the World Trade Organization.

http://www.vietnamembassy-usa.org/news/story.php?d=20061121124139

Was Bush wrong? Is he one of those "evil liberals" you deplore?

[Bubba]

Why don't you address the points you brought up that I've successfully refuted?

Try that, instead of trying to gloss over your academic and intellectually fraud by diverting attention from your failure regarding the issues at hand.

[cheripicker]

Running out of knives, Jim? You made some good points at first, but they are noticeably deteriorating as you go on. From a from a completely different initial perspective, I am rapidly coming to share Bubba’s opinion on the persuasiveness of your arguments. Your triumphant return to the village heralding your victory laurels seems premature at best, sort of like “Mission accomplished”.

“On Joe Guarino’s blog, I take apart his assertions that… hopefully, this was the last gasp, at least around here, of such "retro" ideas.”

Bubba just introduced some very relevant perspectives on Vietnam so why don’t you address them? If you prefer to discuss George W. Bush instead, why not do it in the context of the war he conducted, and address mine?

[Jim Buie]

I'm not sure what points I haven't addressed. If our staying in Vietnam allowed Singapore, Thailand, and other Asian countries in the region to develop their economies and defenses against communism, then it's great that our sacrifices weren't for nothing, and there were some long-term positive results from it.

I knew about the aid that the USSR and China were pouring into N. Vietnam. It's true that in the early days both the West and East saw Vietnam as ground zero of the Cold War. Doesn't mean we should have allowed ourselves to get sunk in a 15-year quagmire there. And it's true that hindsight is of course 20-20.

Professor David Wharton, a conservative on Ed Cone's blog, has posted a speech by Walter Cronkite when he was given the Thayer Award at West Point. Worth reading. Cronkite points out that the U.S. Army did a study that "established that it was NOT the media that forced our withdrawal from Vietnam."

I suppose by Bubba's standards, West Point, the Army, and George W. Bush have all embraced "standard libthink" re Vietnam. He can argue with them. At this point, I think I'll step out of this time warp / cave. You guys turn out the remaining dim lightbulbs when you leave, ok?

[cheripicker]

I know it's hard to masquerade capitulation but that was a reasonable attempt.

[Bubba]

"You guys turn out the remaining dim lightbulbs when you leave, ok?"

No need.

Your departure automatically accomplishes that.

Next time you start with the outrageous assertions driven by your warped worldview, be sure you're prepared to display a little academic integrity.

[Roger Greene]

Here's an interesting affirmation of Cronkite's lack of bias.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/sports/article.aspx?subjectid=94&articleid=20090725_94_B1_Univer782956

[cheripickr]

I don't get it.

[Roger Greene]

Talk about wrong link. But, in my defense Walter might have noodled with his left hand. I copy and pasted something entirely unrelated. Try this one.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223654/?GT1=38001

[cheripickr]

I was really racking my brain on that one but to no avail!

[Bubba]

When it came to Viet Nam, Cronkite was a fish.

Hook, line, and sinker.