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

[The Sage of Main Street]

Why would you drop bombs on empty jungle? what you did was wipe out jungle with chemical agents and any peasant who lived there, people still suffer to this day.

The Right Hand Does Know What Its Left Hand Is Doing

By design, caring about those humanoids makes the pro-war draftdodgers look like real Americans in comparison.

Who were the only ones calling the fake Right "Chickenhawks"? Leftists who had called the GIs "baby-killers." See how that works?
The required conclusion is that silence by the Right about their sissyboy sons only means that the absentee warriors must have been patriotic if the openly treasonous Leftists say they weren't.

 

[Foxfyre]

Imagine if shortly after the start of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, an American newsman had announced on TV that perhaps we needed to seek a negotiated end to WWII because the Germans had launched a massive attack that no one thought possible?

This is not too drastically different from what Walter Cronkite did on February 27, 1968, less than four weeks after the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong subordinates launched their disastrous Tet Offensive on January 30. Here are the two most often-quoted statements from Cronkite's commentary:

To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

You would never guess from Cronkite's spin that the Communists had suffered a horrendous military defeat, suffering staggering losses while failing to seize nearly all of the towns and cities they had targeted (and the few places they did manage to seize were retaken in a matter of weeks).

We now know from North Vietnamese sources that the Tet Offensive was a desperate gamble that Hanoi's leaders took because they realized they were losing the war. Also, the North Vietnamese had assumed that once the offensive began, the majority of South Vietnamese would rise up and help them overthrow the Saigon government, but the vast majority of South Vietnamese remained loyal to their government.

Walter Cronkite and most of the rest of the news media turned the Communists' crushing military defeat into a key propaganda victory for the Communist war effort.

The Tet Offensive Revisited: Media's Big Lie

I still remember Thomas Sowell citing a conversation with a high ranking North Vietnamese officer after the war ended. The officer said we had them beat at the Tet Offensive and they probably would have surrendered at the time. What kept them fighting on were the images on television of Americans burning their draft cards and American flags and otherwise protesting America's involvement in the war. They saw those as allies in their cause so they did not surrender.

The result of course was a stalemate. America shamefully evacuating Saigon in the middle of the night leaving behind many loyal Vietnamese allies to be slaughtered by the Vietcong. One trillion dollars and 58,000 plus American dead and countless others permanently injured mentally or physically by the war and absolutely nothing to show for it. The Vietnamese Marxist totalitarian government is still in place.

Just like Afghanistan. Fewer (24,00+) Americans died or were injured (10s of thousands) but $8 trillion spent to oust the Taliban. The Taliban is in power now.

Which is why it is so important for Americans to know and learn from their honest history and why we should fight no wars without the intention of achieving full and unconditional surrender and establishing our terms unequivocally.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

After the war V.C. Giap admitted that he was out of soldiers and support for the revolution after the V.C. defeat. Cronkite and liberals gave him breathing room for a new offensive.

All Communist Countries Are Called "Republics," a Term Only Lying Tyrants Use

So now you believe a Communist? Giap's real reason was to claim, "See, the Great Satan wiped us out and we still won. An ideology can never be defeated."

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The OP is silly.

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

No way existed to win a military victory in Vietnam.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Soupnazi630, it is impossible to reason with you about a needless, immoral war. You deserve nothing but crude satire. This song expresses how preposterous the War in Vietnam was. I apologize for the use of the f word, but servicemen use it frequently. Country Joe probably learned to use that word when he was in the Navy.

Sobs for Snobs

Not a word in that misleading song about the hidden fact that all the privileged brats in the audience were unofficially exempt from the draft. It was all chuckles about what fools those who were forced to fight really were, proving that they deserve to be paid low wages, too.

 

[Deadstick]

I still remember Thomas Sowell citing a conversation with a high ranking North Vietnamese officer after the war ended. The officer said we had them beat at the Tet Offensive and they probably would have surrendered at the time. What kept them fighting on were the images on television of Americans burning their draft cards and American flags and otherwise protesting America's involvement in the war. They saw those as allies in their cause so they did not surrender.

The result of course was a stalemate. America shamefully evacuating Saigon in the middle of the night leaving behind many loyal Vietnamese allies to be slaughtered by the Vietcong. One trillion dollars and 58,000 plus American dead and countless others permanently injured mentally or physically by the war and absolutely nothing to show for it. The Vietnamese Marxist totalitarian government is still in place.

Just like Afghanistan. Fewer (24,00+) Americans died or were injured (10s of thousands) but $8 trillion spent to oust the Taliban. The Taliban is in power now.

Which is why it is so important for Americans to know and learn from their honest history and why we should fight no wars without the intention of achieving full and unconditional surrender and establishing our terms unequivocally.

The Vietnamese who had fought for the South were not slaughtered when the NVA liberated the place, that was the scare story that the NVA and Southern NLF would go on a bllodbath, never happened.

 

[Hector12]

He did not write 80% would vote he simply vote he simply wrote Minh would win.

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!

 

[Hector12]

Sobs for Snobs

Not a word in that misleading song about the hidden fact that all the privileged brats in the audience were unofficially exempt from the draft. It was all chuckles about what fools those who were forced to fight really were, proving that they deserve to be paid low wages, too.

The song articulates how ridiculous the War in Vietnam was.

 

[Foxfyre]

The Vietnamese who had fought for the South were not slaughtered when the NVA liberated the place, that was the scare story that the NVA and Southern NLF would go on a bllodbath, never happened.

Really? That's why every account of that evacuation describes terrified south Vietnamese trying to claw their way onto American helicopters. The South Vietnamese military and other organized allies of the U.S., if not executed, were too often consigned to 're-education camps' indefinitely where they endured torture, mistreatment, starvation.

 

[Seymour Flops]

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!

Just a couple of logical errors in that post. Which, in fairness, were Eisenhower’s errors, and not yours.

First of all a free and fair election would not be only between two candidates, as Eisenhower proposed.

In a free and fair election, it would either be some sort of primary, to narrow it down or a general election to narrow the list of candidates, followed by a runoff. or something. Anything besides “pick from these two that’s democracy!”

Of course, we have that here in this country and some of us still think it is democracy.

Second, Eisenhower proposed treating north Vietnam and south Vietnam as one combined country. That would be like the US invading Mexico, and then insisting on an election between the current US president and the current Mexican president with Mexican and US citizens voting. The US president would win, due to the larger population of the United States.

Even if that were not so, there’s no such thing as a free election, in the middle of an invasion of one country by another. If there were, Russia could hold an election right now with all Russians, and all Ukrainians getting to vote on who should be in charge of Ukrussia, or whatever.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The Right Hand Does Know What Its Left Hand Is Doing

By design, caring about those humanoids makes the pro-war draftdodgers look like real Americans in comparison.

Who were the only ones calling the fake Right "Chickenhawks"? Leftists who had called the GIs "baby-killers." See how that works?
The required conclusion is that silence by the Right about their sissyboy sons only means that the absentee warriors must have been patriotic if the openly treasonous Leftists say they weren't.

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.

 

[Hector12]

Blood Money for Bluebloods

So did the Nazis have support in France; that's why the French lost. The Nazis also won a reasonably fair election in Germany, so whom the insignificant natives supported is a meaningless consideration. Most of all— because totalitarian thought-control makes us think otherwise—Hitler had majority support as a tool against Communism from the American and European ruling classes, which was the real reason for "appeasement," despite the pro-war draft-dodging heirs of weapons sales hypocritically preaching that appeasement was "cowardice," (Munich meme) and the justification for sending those born in the White working-class off to get slaughtered in Vietnam.

In the Reichstag election of 1932 the Nazis won 33.1% of the vote.

November 1932 German federal election - Wikipedia

That was quite a bit less than the 80% Eisenhower said his advisors tole him Ho Chi Ming might have won in July 1956.

 

[Hector12]

Just a couple of logical errors in that post. Which, in fairness, were Eisenhower’s errors, and not yours...

Second, Eisenhower proposed treating north Vietnam and south Vietnam as one combined country.

The Geneva Agreement of 1954 said "6. The Conference recognizes that the essential purpose of the agreement relating to Viet-Nam is to settle military questions with a view to ending hostilities and that the military demarcation line should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary."

Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History

 

[Seymour Flops]

The Geneva Agreement of 1954 said "6. The Conference recognizes that the essential purpose of the agreement relating to Viet-Nam is to settle military questions with a view to ending hostilities and that the military demarcation line should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary."

Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History

So, what? Obviously, the Geneva agreement had it wrong. They’re clearly was a political divide. Each country had completely different leaders and completely different political systems. Certainly completed different economic systems and completely different goals.

 

[Hector12]

So, what? Obviously, the Geneva agreement had it wrong. They’re clearly was a political divide. Each country had completely different leaders and completely different political systems. Certainly completed different economic systems and completely different goals.

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.

 

[Seymour Flops]

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.

You should read up on the history of those two countries. They are not “one country” anymore than North America and south America are one continent.

 

[Rigby5]

Imagine if shortly after the start of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, an American newsman had announced on TV that perhaps we needed to seek a negotiated end to WWII because the Germans had launched a massive attack that no one thought possible?

This is not too drastically different from what Walter Cronkite did on February 27, 1968, less than four weeks after the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong subordinates launched their disastrous Tet Offensive on January 30. Here are the two most often-quoted statements from Cronkite's commentary:

To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

You would never guess from Cronkite's spin that the Communists had suffered a horrendous military defeat, suffering staggering losses while failing to seize nearly all of the towns and cities they had targeted (and the few places they did manage to seize were retaken in a matter of weeks).

We now know from North Vietnamese sources that the Tet Offensive was a desperate gamble that Hanoi's leaders took because they realized they were losing the war. Also, the North Vietnamese had assumed that once the offensive began, the majority of South Vietnamese would rise up and help them overthrow the Saigon government, but the vast majority of South Vietnamese remained loyal to their government.

Walter Cronkite and most of the rest of the news media turned the Communists' crushing military defeat into a key propaganda victory for the Communist war effort.

The Tet Offensive Revisited: Media's Big Lie

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.

 

[Rigby5]

So, what? Obviously, the Geneva agreement had it wrong. They’re clearly was a political divide. Each country had completely different leaders and completely different political systems. Certainly completed different economic systems and completely different goals.

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

 

[Deadstick]

Really? That's why every account of that evacuation describes terrified south Vietnamese trying to claw their way onto American helicopters. The South Vietnamese military and other organized allies of the U.S., if not executed, were too often consigned to 're-education camps' indefinitely where they endured torture, mistreatment, starvation.

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.

 

[Rigby5]

You should read up on the history of those two countries. They are not “one country” anymore than North America and south America are one continent.

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.