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

[Deadstick]

You sound as mad as a box of frogs Soupnazi.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Are MikeGriffith1 and Tom Paine the same person?

 

[AZrailwhale]

I had no illusions about the Communist side in Vietnam. Nevertheless, I thought the South Vietnamese government was the lesser of two evils, and that the lesser of two evils was not worth fighting for.

As the quote goes, "the only thing necessary for evil to thrive is for good to do nothing." Or as we said in the sixties, "If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem." You are still part of the problem.

 

[Hector12]

 

[Hector12]

 

[Soupnazi630]

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

No where in your link is there any evidence

Sorry BITCH but as usual the evidence proves you to be a bratty little liar who loses every argument

You have never posted evidence

You onlty repeat the same old lies and I have proven them lies

You know this to be true boy.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Mike, if you wish to keep embarrassing yourself, go for it.

Well, the poll numbers are a matter of record. They are what they are, even if they contradict what you believe. And Moyar and Robbins aren't the only scholars who have discussed them.

It is simply a myth that the Tet Offensive caused the majority of Americans to turn against the war. It did the exact opposite, unless all the polls done at the time were wrong.

Oh, yes, Tet--actually, the media's coverage of Tet--increased the ranks of the anti-war movement, but those ranks were a relatively small minority at the time.

If a majority of Americans opposed the war after Tet, how in the world did Hubert Humphrey not win the 1968 election, especially given that Humphrey publicly broke with LBJ on the war over a month before the election? How did Nixon bury the overtly anti-war George McGovern in 1972 in one of the most lopsided landslides in American history, with Nixon winning 60% of the popular vote and 49 states?

In the '68 election, the pro-war candidates, Nixon and Wallace, got 56.9% of the popular vote, compared to Humphrey's 42.7%. Over a month before the election, Humphrey called for an end to all bombing of North Vietnam, wanted to start withdrawing troops, and even advocated a ceasefire. In addition, he chose a prominent dove, Senator Edmund Muskie, as his running mate. Yet, he got only 42.7% of the popular vote.

I bet you are one of those "spit on troops" deniers during Vietnam and after.

Oh, no, not at all. Some Vietnam vets were spit on when they returned home. This was not the norm, but it did happen.

Some returning vets also had people call them "baby killers," were refused service at airport restaurants, and had feces thrown at them. These incidents were not the norm, either, but they happened far too often.

 

[gipper]

That’s why you will remain an ignorant ass.

I did say most. Sometimes you get things right. Not often however.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Good, you have some of the story right anyway. That's a start.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Are MikeGriffith1 and Tom Paine the same person?

For some of those not following the whole debate carefully, mikegriffith1 and I come from entirely different places and our political views (about Vietnam and other matters) have very little in common. He is an old-fashioned Conservative “patriot” with some imo very idiosyncratic beliefs, and I am an anti-imperialist, was an early anti-Vietnam War activist, and still consider myself a patriotic American “internationalist” and independent social-democrat.

Nevertheless I respect the real effort he has made to educate himself over a long period about generally unrecognized aspects of the Vietnam War. Often on the facts, if not always on his interpretations of them, he is correct against liberals or “lefties” he has argued with here about the Vietnam War.

 

[gipper]

For some of those not following the whole debate carefully, mikegriffith1 and I come from entirely different places and our political views (about Vietnam and other matters) have very little in common. He is an old-fashioned Conservative “patriot” with some imo very idiosyncratic beliefs, and I am an anti-imperialist, was an early anti-Vietnam War activist, and still consider myself a patriotic American “internationalist” and independent social-democrat.

Nevertheless I respect the real effort he has made to educate himself over a long period about generally unrecognized aspects of the Vietnam War. Often on the facts, if not always on his interpretations of them, he is correct against liberals or “lefties” he has argued with here about the Vietnam War.

Wow. You’re an anti-imperialist? I must have missed that in your wordy posts.

How come I haven’t seen you oppose Genocide Joe’s wars in Gaza and Ukraine?

 

[mikegriffith1]

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.

I see this argument as morally bankrupt and ethically confused. We had every moral and humane right to try to keep all of Vietnam from falling under Communist tyranny before 1954, and we were equally justified in trying to save South Vietnam from that terrible fate.

If the anti-Vietnam War crowd had been adults during the Korean War, they may well have sabotaged our war effort and enabled the Communists to rule the entire Korean peninsula. Every argument that the anti-war crowd made against the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War.

If this had happened, the tens of millions of people in the southern half of Korea would now be living under the same miserable oppression that North Koreans are.

Thankfully, the young adults in the 1950s were more patriotic and sensible than their counterparts in the 1960s. I

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.

More morally bankrupt and ethically vacuous polemic, not to mention ahistorical.

We could have won the war by 1967 at the latest if we had not foolishly ignored time-tested principles of warfare, and we could have done so without nukes and without massive civilian casualties.

 

[gipper]

I see this argument as morally bankrupt and ethically confused. We had every moral and humane right to try to keep all of Vietnam from falling under Communist tyranny before 1954, and we were equally justified in trying to save South Vietnam from that terrible fate.

If the anti-Vietnam War crowd had been adults during the Korean War, they may well have sabotaged our war effort and enabled the Communists to rule the entire Korean peninsula. Every argument that the anti-war crowd made against the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War.

If this had happened, the tens of millions of people in the southern half of Korea would now be living under the same miserable oppression that North Koreans are.

Thankfully, the young adults in the 1950s were more patriotic and sensible than their counterparts in the 1960s. I



More morally bankrupt and ethically vacuous polemic, not to mention ahistorical.

We could have won the war by 1967 at the latest if we had not foolishly ignored time-tested principles of warfare, and we could have done so without nukes and without massive civilian casualties.

The problem is opposing communism in Vietnam was not our government’s job. Let the Vietnamese figure it out. Imperialism never works for long.

And besides, the consequences of our corrupt government’s involvement was millions killed and maimed, along with destroying the lives of those who survived and infrastructure throughout SE Asia. Could communism have been worse?

Plus who benefited from the war, other than the MIC?

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

We had no moral right to keep SVN away from NV.

(1) It was not our fight.

(2) And without a full scale invasion with a full 15 to 18 division with full naval and air support. we were not going to win it.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Tom Paine 1949 said:

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.

Using this morally blind argument, pacifists could have claimed in 1943 that all we had accomplished was lengthening and worsening the war in Europe. Without America's massive military aid to the Soviets in 1940-1941, the Germans would have destroyed most of the Soviet army by September 1941 and would have conquered the Soviet Union by mid-1942 at the latest.

If you doubt this, read Dr. Sean McMeekin's book Stalin's War: A New History of World War II (Basic Books, 2021), for starters.

Similarly, in 1952, the tiny anti-war movement in the U.S. could have said (and actually did say) that our intervention in the "Korean civil war" had merely prolonged and worsened that bloody struggle. Yes, it is indeed true that if we had not rushed to aid the South Koreans, North Korea, heavily supplied by the Soviets and the Chinese, would have conquered South Korea in a matter of weeks.

So, yes, if we had not intervened to help the South Vietnamese, North Vietnam, with the massive military aid it received from Russia and China, could have conquered South Vietnam by mid-1963 at the latest, and the millions of people living in the south would have come under the same brutal tyranny that oppressed the people in the north.

If you want to get some idea of the massive scale of Chinese aid to North Vietnam, read Chinese historian Quang Zhai's book China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

We had no moral right to keep SVN away from NV.

(1) It was not our fight.

Then we had no moral right to keep South Korea from being brutalized and conquered by North Korea. Then we have no moral right to be keep Ukraine from being raped by Russia.

(2) And without a full scale invasion with a full 15 to 18 division with full naval and air support. we were not going to win it.

On the contrary, we proved in the 1972 Easter Offensive that we could keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam by providing a few hundred advisors, logistical and economic aid, and air and naval support. We proved in Operations Linebacker I and II in mid- and late 1972 that we could bring North Vietnam to the verge of collapse in a matter of months by closing their harbors and finally using our air power in an effective manner.

Admiral Sharp explained in 1969 how we could have the war and won it fairly quickly:

We Could Have Won the Vietnam War Long Ago

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

mikegriffith1 makes a terribly wrong comparison of 1943 with the Vietnam War after Tet.

 

[mikegriffith1]

During the war, the anti-war movement actually claimed that life in the south would be better under Communist rule than under Saigon's rule, that a Communist southern government would actually be more humane and tolerant, and even more democratic, than the Saigon government.

When this delusion quickly evaporated after Hanoi's victory, many anti-war activists suddenly lost interest in "peace, democracy, and freedom" for Vietnam. Indeed, many of them denied the thousands of reports of Communist tyranny and terror in the south.

One of those accounts came from Nguyen Cong Hoan in 1977. Hoan had been a militant South Vietnamese anti-war activist. Hoan had called for a U.S. withdrawal and for negotiations with the Communists. He honestly believed that a Communist victory would be a liberation and would improve the lives of the South Vietnamese. But after the North Vietnamese took over, Hoan soon realized he had been duped and fled the country by boat in 1977.

Here is part of an article that Hoan wrote that was published in Newsweek in late 1977:

The government of Vietnam has accepted triumphantly its full United Nations membership, to the cheers of what Hanoi calls “progressive mankind” – the Communist countries, much of the Third World, and those in the West who opposed American Government policies during the war.

To a Vietnamese like myself, who detested the corrupt and repressive Thieu regime and considered the Communist victory a liberation, such an event should bring joy. But after living for nearly two years in Communist Vietnam, I feel precisely the opposite emotion.

I escaped from Vietnam to tell the world the truth about what is happening in my country. Within days after Hanoi’s troops came to my town, such widely proclaimed policies of the Viet Cong’s National Liberation Front as religious freedom, democratic liberties, peace and neutralism went out the window. Even the southern Communists were cast aside by northerners acting as conquerors, seizing all levers of power, inventorying and requisitioning everything.

For those bold enough to question, a vast network of prisons called “re-education camps” was established almost overnight – prisons where inmates were worked to death or starved. The prisoners included not only former Saigon military and civilian officials, but also many who opposed them – advocates of democratic liberties and a compromise peace. . . .

In my province, Phu Yen, alone, out of a total population of about 300,000, there were more than 6,000 prisoners in seven camps when I left Vietnam last spring. . . .

Outside the camps, many are unemployed and those with jobs can barely earn enough to feed one person, let alone a family. Thousands are press-ganged into nonpaying, ostensibly “voluntary” labor brigades working on roads, canals and irrigation ditches. Large numbers are forced to settle in remote, disease-ridden “new economic zones,” a population dispersal aimed more at political control than at economic development. . . .

The new authorities rule by force and terror. What little freedom existed under Thieu is gone. The An Ninh secret police are dreaded – worse than any previous Vietnamese regime. There is no freedom of movement or association, no freedom of the press, or of religion, or of economic enterprise, or even of private personal opinion. Rights of habeas corpus, or of property, are either unknown or flouted even as the government redefines these rights. Fear is everywhere. An indiscreet remark can make one liable to instant arrest and an indefinite prison term (Why I Escaped From Vietnam).

Hoan learned the hard way that the Saigon government was not nearly as repressive as the Hanoi government.

Indeed, although the Saigon regime could treat anti-government activists harshly and sometimes even brutally, it allowed considerable freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, private schools, substantial free enterprise, the right of private property, freedom of association, etc. The Hanoi regime allowed none of these rights.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The South fell because corruption in its government was incredible.

My friend was a Green Beret in command of Spec Ops group attached to a Hmong mercenary unit in the Highlands.

One night when attacked, he radio for provincial artillery support. It never happened, and the unit was saved by American chopper gun support.

The investigation determined the SV province chief had sold the ammo to the VC/NVA.

Just typical of what the Americans and faithful SVA faced on a daily basis.

 

[Hector12]

During the war, the anti-war movement actually claimed that life in the south would be better under Communist rule than under Saigon's rule, that a Communist southern government would actually be more humane and tolerant, and even more democratic, than the Saigon government.

I was in the anti war movement. I never made that claim. I thought neither side was very good, and that the United States made a bad situation worse by intervening.

I thought we should evacuate those Vietnamese who did not want to live under the Communists, and bring them here to the United States to live. I have known Vietnamese war refugees. They are good people. If there had been more of them in Vietnam, the Communists would not have won.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The South fell because corruption in its government was incredible.

My friend was a Green Beret in command of Spec Ops group attached to a Hmong mercenary unit in the Highlands.

One night when attacked, he radio for provincial artillery support. It never happened, and the unit was saved by American chopper gun support.

The investigation determined the SV province chief had sold the ammo to the VC/NVA.

Just typical of what the Americans and faithful SVA faced on a daily basis.

That's just hogwash. Such incidents were not the norm. They happened, and they were not rare, but they were not the general rule either.

Furthermore, there was just as much corruption in the Hanoi government as there was in the Saigon government, if not much more. Compared to other Asian nations, South Vietnam's corruption ranked somewhere in the middle.