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

[Soupnazi630]

We should have left them alone.

Minh should have

 

[Hector12]

Minh should have

You remind me of a political cartoon I saw during the Johnson administration. A tall Vietnamese named Nguyen Yan Sen was pointing at Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, and demanding, "Who are these foreigners who dare to desecrate our sacred soil?"

It was their country. We didn't belong.

 

[Soupnazi630]

You remind me of a political cartoon I saw during the Johnson administration. A tall Vietnamese named Nguyen Yan Sen was pointing at Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, and demanding, "Who are these foreigners who dare to desecrate our sacred soil?"

It was their country. We didn't belong.

Wrong

It was not their country and we had a valid treaty with the south whiuch we honored

I remind you of uncomfortable and absolute facts

 

[gipper]

Wrong

It was not their country and we had a valid treaty with the south whiuch we honored

I remind you of uncomfortable and absolute facts

Wrong on that horrendous war, just like the JFK coup.

How are things at Langley these days?

I bet you still believe the domino theory. LMFAO!

 

[Soupnazi630]

Wrong on that horrendous war, just like the JFK coup.

How are things at Langley these days?

I bet you still believe the domino theory. LMFAO!

I am correct about both

You KNOW Oswald was gthe only shooter as I have proven

You know he was the only one who fired a wesapon that day and your claims to the contrary are proven lies

I own you boy

 

[gipper]

I am correct about both

You KNOW Oswald was gthe only shooter as I have proven

You know he was the only one who fired a wesapon that day and your claims to the contrary are proven lies

I own you boy

Lol.

As you know but won’t admit, Oswald never fired a shot that fateful day when your grandpa Dulles committed the crime of the century and got away with it.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Lol.

As you know but won’t admit, Oswald never fired a shot that fateful day when your grandpa Dulles committed the crime of the century and got away with it.

You know he was the only one who fired a weapon that way

Unlike your delusion the evidence proves it

You have never backed up your childish crap with evidence

Your daddy oswald acted alone

 

[gipper]

You know he was the only one who fired a weapon that way

Unlike your delusion the evidence proves it

You have never backed up your childish crap with evidence

Your daddy oswald acted alone

Grandpa Dulles told you the truth before he died. No need to keep up the charade?

 

[Soupnazi630]

Grandpa Dulles told you the truth before he died. No need to keep up the charade?

You have been proven wrong by evidence a thousand times

You have never backed up your claims with evidence of your own

You are simply a liar and a troll

You know I am correct and better than you

 

[mikegriffith1]

Hector12 said:
Ho won because most of the Vietnamese supported him.

Obviously, you still have not read any of the scholarly sources that I've cited that refute this myth, such as the works of Asselin and Goscha.

Ho won because he murdered numerous non-communist nationalist leaders, shut down opposition news outlets, and imposed a Stalinist police state on the people to maintain his power.

I ask again, if Ho was so popular, (1) why did nearly 1 million people flee the north during the open-movement period after the Geneva Accords, and (2) why did he find it necessary to impose a police state on the people that suppressed every basic right (speech, religion, association, property, due process, etc.)? Why?

We should have left Vietnam alone.

If North Vietnam had not invaded South Vietnam, there would have been no war in the first place.

Should we have "left Korea alone" too and just let the Communists govern the whole peninsula? If so, there would be no South Korea and the people of southern Korea would be living under the cruel tyranny that rules North Korea.

When the Communist won in the South Newsweek and Time ran cover pictures of triumphant, victorious Communist soldiers, with the words, "The Winning Side." By then a lot of Americans in important positions wanted the Communists to win. Many additional Americans had tired of the forever war in Vietnam.

Most Americans were saddened by the fall of South Vietnam, especially after it became clear that the Communists were imposing a reign of terror on the people.

The "forever war"? I suspect you're never going to stop repeating this myth. Again, we could have ended the war in a matter of months if we had followed the long-established, time-tested, commonsense principles of warfare that the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Sharp, President Eisenhower, General Westmoreland, General Abrams, and many others urged LBJ to follow.

During the 11-day Linebacker II bombing campaign in 1972, it took no more than 9 days to render Hanoi defenseless against air attack. When we mined North Vietnam's harbors in May 1972, the Hanoi regime's incoming supplies were cut by 85% and NVA troops in the south were forced to start rationing ammo and food.

If we had taken and sustained these actions for a few months at any point from 1960 onward, we could have crippled North Vietnam's war-making capacity and imposed a genuine, enforceable peace.

 

[Hector12]

Wrong

It was not their country and we had a valid treaty with the south whiuch we honored

I remind you of uncomfortable and absolute facts

The facts are that Eisenhower said his advisors told him as many as 80% of the Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh, and we violated the Geneva Agreement of 1954.

The Communists won. Get used to it.

 

[Soupnazi630]

The facts are that Eisenhower said his advisors told him as many as 80% of the Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh, and we violated the Geneva Agreement of 1954.

The Communists won. Get used to it.

His advisors were wrong and we violated NO geneva agreement

You have to state lies to support your opinion.

Yes they won but that is not the issue

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Nobody should deny that Vietnam today is a repressive Stalinist state. In some ways the situation in regard to basic personal/political freedoms is worse than in China, certainly worse than it was in China in the period before XiJinping consolidated his cult of personality. The Communist Party was always Stalinist, as was HoChiMinh since he joined the Comintern as a young man after traveling to Europe and discovering that not only the traditional “liberal democratic” capitalist parties but also the Socialist Party of France were not interested in helping the Vietnamese independence movement.

That Ho was a “Stalinist” does not mean the U.S. was right to support French colonialists, help divide the country in half and then send over half a million men to hold the Southern half with the greatest war machine in the world — and more bombing than in all of WWII. What we actually accomplished was only to lengthen, worsen and make still more brutal and desperate what was already a bloody National Liberation struggle and a civil war. Hell, we hurt ourselves and our society terribly as well. The “Great Society” in many ways died in the swamps of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh was originally (and always) deeply nationalist, and he sought alternatives to communism as a young man, as did many others. But Vietnam was located next to giant China which was undergoing its own Civil War and Communism and Soviet Russia at that time offered real practical advantages for a revolutionary movement. Aid fighting the French before and after WWII was hardly forthcoming from anywhere else. HoChiMinh’s movement did early on purge oppositionists, even Left Oppositionists as for example the Trotskyists, whose leader was a man Ho respected (but executed), partly because it was necessary for his own survival and for continued support from his “Western “ally” Stalin in the immediate post WWII period.

The violent oppression and savage behavior of the National Liberation Movement’s many enemies and the general conditions of continual war didn’t offer many prospects for the deeply anti-French colonialist, anti-Japanese imperialist and finally anti-U.S. occupation Communists to adopt a “Euro-Communist”-like commitment to respecting “elections.” Nevertheless, there were initially many differences within the VCP and some factions within it were later pro-Cultural Revolution, others pro-Russian and thus ostensibly pro-“Peaceful Co-existence.”

Many South Vietnam peasants experienced anti-“private property” policies imposed on them not by the Vietcong, but rather by the South Vietnam / U.S. armies, which often bombed and forced them to relocate into “strategic hamlets.” “Communism” thus meant little to such peasants. Similarly in the North after the war with the U.S. grew in the 1960s, most common North Vietnamese workers and peasants were mobilized into a war economy, and developed private business was limited to the South and the Catholic minority who had relocated there.

My point is it is wrong to romanticize either side in the Vietnam War. There were plenty of “heroes” and “villains” on both sides. Our political leaders should have been wise and brave enough not to have escalated that war in the first place. Blaming mainstream, highly experienced war reporters like Walter Cronkite, so long after the fact, for telling it exactly like they saw it … is quite absurd.

After all, we might have won the wars in Afghanistan and Syria / Iraq too … if we were just willing to leave a half million or so soldiers in those countries for a decade or two and poured more trillions of dollars into the effort!

If we compare the unwillingness of (many or most) MAGA Republicans to even aid Ukraine, which is fighting for its own national survival against the ex-KGB dictator Putin, who now runs his own fascistic and more and more collectivized / nationalized “war economy,” we can see quite a contrast among once “patriotic” American rightwingers from then to now. After all, we are not sending ANY of our soldiers to fight and die there today, let alone a half million or more.

 

[gipper]

Nobody should deny that Vietnam today is a repressive Stalinist state. In some ways the situation in regard to basic personal/political freedoms is worse than in China, certainly worse than it was in China in the period before XiJinping consolidated his cult of personality. The Communist Party was always Stalinist, as was HoChiMinh since he joined the Comintern as a young man after traveling to Europe and discovering that not only the traditional “liberal democratic” capitalist parties but also the Socialist Party of France were not interested in helping the Vietnamese independence movement.

This does not mean the U.S. was right to support French colonialists, help divide the country in half and then send over half a million men to hold the Southern half with the greatest war machine in the world — and more bombing than in all of WWII. What we actually accomplished was only to lengthen, worsen and make still more brutal and desperate what was already a bloody National Liberation struggle and a civil war. Hell, we hurt ourselves and our society terribly as well. The “Great Society” in many ways died in the swamps of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh was originally (and always) deeply nationalist, and he sought alternatives to communism as a young man, as did many others. But Vietnam was located next to giant China which was undergoing its own Civil War and Communism and Soviet Russia at that time offered real practical advantages for a revolutionary movement. Aid fighting the French before and after WWII was hardly forthcoming from anywhere else. HoChiMinh’s movement did early on purge oppositionists, even Left Oppositionists as for example the Trotskyists, whose leader was a man Ho respected (but executed), partly because it was necessary for his own survival and for continued support from his “Western “ally” Stalin in the immediate post WWII period.

The violent oppression and savage behavior of the National Liberation Movement’s many enemies and the general conditions of continual war didn’t offer many prospects for the deeply anti-French colonialist, anti-Japanese imperialist and finally anti-U.S. occupation Communists to adopt a “Euro-Communist”-like commitment to respecting “elections.” Nevertheless, there were initially many differences within the VCP and some factions within it were later pro-Cultural Revolution, others pro-Russian and thus ostensibly pro-“Peaceful Co-existence.”

Most South Vietnam peasants often experienced anti-“private property” policies imposed on them by the South Vietnam / U.S. armies, which often bombed and forced them to relocate in “strategic hamlets.” “Communism” at first meant little to such peasants. Similarly in the North after the war with the U.S. grew in the 1960s, most common North Vietnamese workers and peasants were mobilized into a war economy, and developed private business was limited to the South and the Catholic minority who had relocated to the South.

My point is it is wrong to romanticize either side in the Vietnam War. There were plenty of “heroes” and “villains” on both sides. Our political leaders should have been wise and brave enough not to have escalated that war in the first place. Blaming men like Walter Cronkite, so long after the fact, for telling it like he saw it is rather absurd.

After all, we might have won the war in Afghanistan and Syria / Iraq too … if we were willing to leave a half million or a million soldiers in those countries for a decade or so and poured more trillions of dollars into the effort.

If we compare the unwillingness of (many or most) MAGA Republicans to even aid Ukraine, which is fighting for its own national survival against the ex-KGB dictator Putin, who now runs his own fascistic and more and more collectivized / nationalized “war economy,” we can see quite a contrast among once “patriotic” American rightwingers from then to now. After all, we are not sending ANY of our soldiers to fight and die there today, let alone a half million or more.

Lol. Wow. Totally delusional.

 

[gipper]

You have been proven wrong by evidence a thousand times

You have never backed up your claims with evidence of your own

You are simply a liar and a troll

You know I am correct and better than you

I’m guessing your grandpa Dulles put you through his MKUltra program. So, you’re unable to think.

Visiting any truth-telling independent website could disorient persons who have been brainwashed by the Mainstream Media (MSM) into believing the MSM’s lies and propaganda. As former CIA Director William Casey said, “We shall know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believes is false.” And CIA ex-Director William Colby observed: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” So scrap everything you think you’ve learned from the New York Times, the Washington Post, your city newspaper, and the major TV networks.

Important Takeaways:

* President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all assassinated by US Government-orchestrated plots. These murders laid the groundwork for today’s belligerent US Empire run by a power-hungry, corrupt Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-
Warning: This Website May Harm Your Preconceptions - LewRockwell

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Lol. Wow. Totally delusional.

In what way? I thought I covered the reality in this and my many other comments in this thread very objectively.

Have you been to China or Vietnam recently? Do they allow freedom of speech? A free press or internet? The right to protest and oppose the corrupt Communist Party & government? What exactly am I delusional about?

 

[gipper]

In what way? I thought I covered the reality in this and my many other comments in this thread very objectively.

Have you been to China or Vietnam today? Do they allow freedom of speech? A free press or internet? The right to protest and oppose the corrupt Communist Party & government? What exactly am I delusional about?

Your ridiculous partisan bs about Ukraine and trumpers. Straight out of MSNBC.

SHUT OFF THE TV!

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

So it is only that tiny part of my long comment that is “totally delusional”?

Anything else … ?

 

[gipper]

So it is only that tiny part of my long comment that is “totally delusional”?

Anything else … ?

Didn’t bother to read it. Most of your long screeds are worthless.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Didn’t bother to read it. Most of your long screeds are worthless.

That’s why you will remain an ignorant ass.