Walter Cronkite's Ridiculous Spin on the 1968 Tet Offensive in South Vietnam

[San Souci]

"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." LBJ

This wasn't "spin". Cronkite was about the last one to climb on the bandwagon. LBJ knew he was screwed at that point and announced he wouldn't run again.

Which was good ,since LBJ acquired the Presidency by Coup.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Yes, I know you were not at the Embassy, and, yes, I know what happened that day.

Losing a war is awful, and the aftermath is worse. And, yes, it was heartbreaking.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Which was good ,since LBJ acquired the Presidency by Coup.

No, he did not. Stop being goofy.

 

[Soupnazi630]

What you did get right was the 1954 Geneva meeting, the election never happened because Ho Chi Minh would have won, the Americans and their puppets in the South didn't want that, so Minh was left with no choice but to liberate the Country by force.

Wrong

Would have means nothing. He refused to hold elections himself and siezed power then made him self into a ruler.

No one is liberated by communisgt tyranny

 

[Soupnazi630]

About as legal as Hitlers attack on France.

Wrong.

It was very legal and we were not the aggressor

 

[Soupnazi630]

The OP is silly.

Nazi Germany was going down while the NVA had sanctuaries in three countries and China.

Wrong.

We fucked it up but that does not mean it was unwinnable.

They had no sancuary in China. In fact they had the same problems we did.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Wrong.
Ho Chi Minh was wildly popular in South Vietnam since he had defeated the hated French.
The ONLY people who did not like Ho Chi Minh were the wealthy elite traitors in the south who have collaborated with the French and the Japanese.

Wrong

He was only mildly popular in the North. Mosgt Vietnamese did not support him.

 

[Soupnazi630]

They were not slaughtered and they did need re-educating, to take pride in their own Country and not collaborate with foreign Colonialists and occupiers, after WW2 collaborators in Vichy France and other Nazi collaborators were dealt with the same way, although some of them were lined up and shot.

Yes they were massacred. Re education means forced conditioning and brainwashing.

 

[Soupnazi630]

No, the south was an illegal military coup by Diem that deposed the popular and legal government of Bau Dai.

Wrong

The South was a legal government it was Minh who siezed power in a coup/

 

[Soupnazi630]

Wrong.
What the Tet Offensive showed everyone is that the vast majority of the people in South Vietnam were Vietcong or their sympathizers.
The Tet Offensive was not an invasion by the north.
It was a local uprising by the south.
The vast majority of the south did NOT "remain loyal" to the hated South Vietnam government.
The government won the Tet Offensive, but that is only because of all the US weapons they had.
The Tet offensive showed that the South Vietnam government had NO local support at all.
Everyone hated Diem, Thieu, and Ky.
We forced the worst and most unpopular governments in world history on them, and no one liked it.

Wrong

What it showed was that the communists were weak and most vietnamese opposed them

The Tet offensive was an invasion by the north who were in factyy the aggressors.

Minhs government was far worse

 

[Soupnazi630]

So Vietnam was one country, where the vast majority of the Vietnamese supported the Communists. We had no business telling the Vietnamese how to govern themselves.

Not true

The were traditionallly seperate kingdoms and most did not suppor the communists

Mingh had no business launching a war of aggresion to force communism on them

 

[Soupnazi630]

The Sage of Main Street is a raving lunatic who makes no sense at all, repeats all the old rightwing lunacy about how the Tet Offensive indicated the Vietnamese were losing the war, and that the U.S. then was “winning.” He also seems to believe that the war was part of a deliberate conspiracy to destroy “the [U.S.] white working class.”

But the U.S. and its working class especially — now as during Vietnam War period — was and remains multiracial. The drafted U.S. soldiers sent to Vietnam, especially the “grunts” doing the fighting in the most dangerous areas, tended disproportionally to be black and minority.

Many officers in the war were actually U.S. middle-class and upper-class “patriots” (most as brainwashed as all Americans were at its beginning). Think flight officer pilot John McCain.

It is also untrue that the deferments of college students remained in force … they were ended in 1968 (iirc), and that was one of the reasons the anti-war movement grew on campuses … just as the later ending of the draft took the wind out of the sails of the student anti-war movement.

The genuine “left” did not call drafted GIs “baby killers” but helped launch Vietnam Veterans Against the War and organized anti-war “coffeehouse” centers outside of military bases across the country. The media, especially the rightwing and pro-war media, exaggerated individual cases where nutty yippies or hippies acted stupidly to create that particular myth.

Finally, both Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Gap did not plan and strongly opposed the Tet Offensive. They were at that time sidelined by the impatient Le Duan and Le Duc Tho in nearly all key decision-making positions.

The Tet Offensive was both a successful psychological blow that burst all the lies told by the U.S. media and generals, and also an adventurous move that cost the Vietnamese Liberation Movement dearly. The struggle went on afterwards much as before, however, with the American soldiers based in cities then more fearful and paranoid than ever.

He may well be wrong as you say but so are you.

The draft was in fact not disproportionate to african americans. African American men made up 12 percent of the draft age male population and 11.5 percent of the draftees.

The left overwhelmingly DID oppose and hate the men who fought not only calling them foul names but harrassing the parents of dead GIs . Igt is in fact no myth but a common occurence.

The people supporting and fighting the war were not brainwashed they were informed and educated.

The so called anti war movement were brainwashed marxists who didnot oppose the war but supported the enemy

 

[Hector12]

Not true

The were traditionallly seperate kingdoms and most did not suppor the communists

Mingh had no business launching a war of aggresion to force communism on them

I have documented my assertions. Document yours.

 

[Soupnazi630]

This page from President Eisenhower's Memoires, Mandate for Change, page 372, shows that he believed Ho Chi Minh would have won any free election in Vietnam in 1954. This is certainly why the U.S. did not permit such an election, though the Geneva Convention of 1954 required it.

I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai.

Selection from Eisenhower's Memoires

That is 80 percent, Soupnazi630. What do you do with a number like that? Eight Zero!

The US did not fail to permiy anything.

The US took no action to stop an election.

It was the Vietnemse who failed to hold one

 

[Soupnazi630]

I have documented my assertions. Document yours.

Liar

You have done noi such thing

 

[Soupnazi630]

Which was good ,since LBJ acquired the Presidency by Coup.

He did no such thing

 

[Hector12]

The US did not fail to permiy anything.

The US took no action to stop an election.

It was the Vietnemse who failed to hold one

Ngo Diem Dinh, who had little support in South Vietnam, refused to hold the elections in South Vietnam, and the United States supported him in that refusal. Eisenhower said that Ho Chi Minh may have won by a natinwide election by as much as 80 percent of the vote.

 

[Hector12]

He did no such thing

You and everyone else who has read my comments knows that I did. You refuse to accept facts that violate what you want to believe.

 

[Hector12]

Which was good ,since LBJ acquired the Presidency by Coup.

In 1964 Lyndon Johnson won 61 percent of the popular vote against Goldwater.

 

[Soupnazi630]

You and everyone else who has read my comments knows that I did. You refuse to accept facts that violate what you want to believe.

That is an outright false hood

Everyone including you and I know you have only refyurgitated empty opinion with no documention.

That is FACT

You are a bald faced liar DEAL WITH IT