"An authoritarian government can wage a foolish, losing war indefinitely, but not a democracy." Not true. All types of government can wage a foolish losing war indefinitely just read Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. The Athenian democracy waged a losing war for almost 30 years not to mention what the Athenians did to people who didn't submit to their rule like the people of Melos. Thucydides writes, “the powerful do what they wish and the weak suffer what they must” If this sounds familiar to what we see today it's because human nature hasn't changed much because we either don't know history or we learn the wrong lessons from it.
In his book Bowden glosses over the VC/NVA massacres of Hue citzens. In one of his interviews he acknowledges not pursuing a South Vietnamese perspective. I suggest "A Mourning Headband for Hue" by Nha Ca for a Vietnamese civilian's perspective on the Battle of Hue.
I found a couple issues in the Bowden's epilogue:
1- Bowden's statement that the US continued to give substantial support to RSV under the Ford Administration in totally false. The cumulative effect of the Cooper Church Amendment, the Case Church Amendment in June of '73 and the War Powers Act in November effectively hung the RVN out to dry.
By late 1974 (early in the Ford Administration) the South Vietnamese were running of fuel, ammo & morale at an alarming rate. With the RVN no longer able to properly defend themselves, the DRV leaped at the opportunity along with the immense support from the USSR and a lesser extent the PRC. Whether continued adequate assistance from the US would have prevented the eventual collapse is debatable or unlikely depending on your point of view.
Certainly, the abandonment of South Vietnam by her ally America in 1974 & 75 was the final nail in the coffin for the Republic of Vietnam.
2- Regarding Nixon's illegalities with Watergate- it has never been proven he ordered break-in, just conjecture. Even Sheinkin in his favorable Ellsberg biography credits it to the "Plumbers" run wild. Though Nixon was still ultimately responsible.
Cronkite was a terribly insightful person , he hit the nail sqaure in the head with the word " stalemate " , it quite fits the situation . At that moment , the US couldn't be beaten militarily and the other side despte its losses wouldn't declared itself beaten , it sure was a draw . But in that kind o war , the insurgents win when they don't lose and vice versa : it was perhaps the same thing in 1783 for Great Britain who called it quits . The VC live there in VN , they had no choice ; the US lived over here , they always had the option of withdrawing .
About the terrible losses incurred by the VC - NVA , they weren't decisive . The US maybe won a victory but basicallly , it was just a defensive one . US forces were checkmated , they were locked in their enclaves , the initiative belonged to their adversaries who attacked at will the weak points , US forces couldn't defend every place ; their forays in the countryside were ineffective , as a sword into water . The poor souls who , 50 years after , still desperately clamor " we were winning but we let go of the opportunity " are delusional , they just won a consolation prize .
1
Wow. We have such different memories. I was a college freshman in 1968. I had already concluded the war was not winnable, assisting some 8th graders on a school project. They were assigned to look at the war in the popular press—Time and Newsweek—and as I led them through issues chronologically, they recorded headlines: “Light at the end of the tunnel” and “turning the corner” came up over and over. We were being lied to, clearly. No light appeared, and no corner, either. Back on campuses, the student movement was huge, grassroots, and unstoppable. It was our friends and relatives who were being drafted, and were doing the killing and the dying, and we couldn’t even vote yet. Looked at from the grassroots, it is astounding that the war persisted through the Nixon years. What Walter Cronkite did was voice what we had already realized. Even our upper middle class, Republican parents turned against the war. And, yes, the fact that their about-to-graduate sons faced the draft sped their conversion.
8
Alice Herz (May 25, 1882 – March 16, 1965) was the first activist in the United States known to have immolated herself in protest of the escalating Vietnam War, following the example of Buddhist monks. She was a longtime peace activist. She died of her injuries ten days later. The war continued for another ten years following her death. -- Wikipedia
2
I think the conservative charge against the press over Vietnam misstates what is actually meant. It's that they realized, like the Administration did, that the public would only support the war with continued cheerleading by the press, uncritically repeating and giving credence to Administration lying. When the press withdrew their cheerleading and reported facts (that is, the truth), Americans gradually withdrew their support for the war. When Hubert Humphrey visited Vietnam and told one reporter to "get on the team," the reporter asked a colleague "What team does he think we've been playing for up to now?"
The press sin in Vietnam was that they repeated official lies for too long, not that they stopped repeating them.
6
When the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong overran the ARVN in just 55 days in 1975 despite being only about a quarter of ARVN's size, they were flabbergasted to find they had captured no less than 130.000 tons of ammunition, and about 6 billion dollars worth of arms: about 30 billion dollars in current prices. See Frank Snepp (CIA officer in Saigon) : "Decent Interval", 1977. Also, Emmanuel Todd, "Cruel April". The ARVN cpould not fight for long without B-52s. That was the long and short of it. Their enemes were even in 1975 chronically short of ammunition and advanced weaponry. Their tanks were not the latest Soviet ones. China was already allied with America, and the USSR was wavering. None of this stopped them. See George Veith, "Black April", for a good pro-Saigon history.
Well despite the heavy losses on the other side, the state of the conflict really was in stalemate.
In hindsight, the outcome was predictable when Diem was leading the government of South Vietnam. The establishment of an independent non-Communist state to contain the boundaries of the Communist regimes world wide, while avoiding war with China and the Soviet Union was the only real policies driving the War. The South was not becoming the kind of country that we needed to prevent unification under Communist governance. Because of this and the inability to attack and to conquer the North, the outcome was already obvious to anyone willing to face misfortune without looking away.
3
I was there for Tet.
One thing that surprised me during my tour there was that the US news reporting on the number of US dead was extremely accurate. I had access to,the real numbers and the numbers reported in US news were as accurate as could be expected.
I would have though the government would have cheated on the numbers.
All those dead, on both sides, and for what? For what?
4
The US omitted counting the wounded who died after they were evacuated out-of-country, and did not let on about some of the horrific single-action casualties that decimated whole companies in a few minutes. I had time in the hospital to hear these things first-hand from survivors.
I think eventually the government provided actual counts, but not in anything like real time.
The "anchors" reporting the news today are dead weight.
4
Where have you gone, Walter Cronkite
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
8
When my oldest brother, high-school educated and in a job where he met the real blue-collar public, turned against the Vietnam War, I knew it had no political support. Washington figured it out somewhat later.
1
January, 1965. Well before Cronkite. From an interview with Malcolm X a few months before his death.
Interviewer: What about the U.S. role in South Vietnam?
"It shows the real ignorance of those who control the American power structure. ...I don't see how anybody in their right mind can think the U.S. can get in there-it's impossible. So it shows her ignorance, her blindness, her lack of foresight and hindsight and her complete defeat in South Vietnam is only a matter of time."
Sure give Cronkite his due, but let's not pretend he told America anything she might not have know earlier.
13
jimmy
Ya, but in 2018 a Black voice shouting has difficulty finding an audience in the U.S.; Malcolm X in 1965 could have been Albert Einstein and White America would have read tea leaves before they listened to him.
5
I don't understand why so many US citizens cannot realize that war is the sole support of the American economy and as such must be continued regardless a cause or a victor.
Billions of tax dollars spent in support of arms industries - the only substantial industries left in this country.
That's all it is and because that is all there is to it each and every "war" death is a murder which should be the subject of criminal statutes in this and every country involved.
7
Well, the economy as of 2016 had been estimated at around $19.36 trillion (see: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html).
`
At that time, defense spending was about estimated at 3.3% of GDP (see: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?order=wbapi_data_... ), which may increase with the current administration.
`
That is a pretty small percentage all the same, and there are quite a few other industries bolstering the economy, like tech, which is in a huge boom, life sciences, finance, etc.; and even energy has been rebounding. Auto experienced huge boom that looks like will hit a pause over the next year or so.
The NYT needs to do a thorough expose on the Fairness Doctrine and the fact that ultra right-wing propaganda became rampant after that via the purchase of many hundreds of radio stations and Mr. Murdock's commencement of Fox News in 1978. There is no counterweight to this propaganda since NPR always presents views from both sides of the political sphere.
10
a journalist visiting a war zone has the definitive say on a war's status? Seriously? As we walked away, the North Vietnamese violated the armistice, took over, and massacred all the educated, all the doctors, all the teachers. Believe it or not, we are the good guys. The progressive whitewash of communist genocide in Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia, China and North Korea continues but the history is clear.
4
While that is true, it has nothing material to do with the fact that the war was unwinnable short of perpetual occupation and never-ending violence.
8
@Joe yohka
Many people were killed by the communists to be sure, many were "re-educated", and many fled. Meanwhile Vietnam stopped a true genocidal bloodbath next door in Cambodia and then defeated China when China tried to punish them for that, since the Cambodian regime was their ally/puppet.
We nearly wiped out the Native Americans and enslaved millions of Africans back in our bad old days, right?
Today, many of those Vietnamese folks who cowered in their hooches terrified by fire from all sides live in peace and growing prosperity though that economic growth, like all economic growth versus sustainability is, well, unsustainable.
But communism still has not taken over the world. Ironically, our blind consumerism has led us to hand the Global Economy over to China without them firing a shot, and they now own us via Walmart and Amazon.com and are leaps and bounds ahead of us in technology and are building weapons systems we will most likely be seeing in the South China Sea sooner rather than later.
History-- and economics-- are complicated.
But in any case you seem to be able to see all black and white and certainty where I see mostly gray and degrees of nuance. I envy you, that must feel blissful.
8
Very few folks care to acknowledge or discuss the crimes of the communists and the DRV.
Why would anyone trust an "anchor" (headline reader)? They have no more basis for what they say than any newspaper reader.
1
Cronkite was a newsman in every sense of the word. The opposite of the vapid, shallow, ignorant talking heads we are plagued with on cable and the broadcast networks today.
Cronkite and his peers worked the field and moved up because of experience, not because of how they looked, or how hip they
7
Because unlike any newspaper reader, he was actually in Hue during Tet and saw firsthand the results of the battle. It changed his mind, and his reporting was purely objective.
3
The big deal with the Tet offensive was not who won, but that the claims of the US military that the forces of the North and the South Vietnamese forces hostile to the US and its puppet regime were close to defeat (claims that had been repeated and would be repeated again with great regularity throughout the war) were obviously a bit premature. In fact, they were totally false.
A Republican President once said something along the lines of "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
The current resident of the White House never learned this bit of wisdom as he basically dropped out of school in 4th grade before it appeared in the curriculum.
3
I thought that was a quote from PT Barnum. Republican presidents actually believe you can fool all the people all the time.
3
Right!
after all, the r-kons are the circus ringleaders, as well as the clowns, stooges, and performing elephants.
The Vietnam War made America weakened America both militarily and economically. US balance of payments deficits tripled between 64 and 68 and America's gold reserves declined precipitously. European banks withdrew another 1 billion by mid-march 68.
Dec 31,1968 US Army Europe stated for 2nd straight year none of its major combat units had met their operational training readiness conditions. JCS forced to flunk every division and brigade in US continental command with the lowest rating in all categories except for the 82 Airborne.
2
We did not win in Vietnam because we did not have the stomach to do what had to be done to win. We left the electrical infrastructure powering SAM sites intact in Hanoi, for example. Had we firebombed Hanoi like we did German and Japanese cities in WWII, we could have crushed the North Vietnamese into the ground. We could have allowed the South Vietnamese to develop a secret police like many of our other Cold War client states. Remember, Vietnam was about global power, not the Vietnamese people.
1
More bombs were dropped on North Vietnam and Cambodia than were dropped in Europe during WWII.
How did that work out?
If Vietnam was about global power, then we shouldn't have been there in the first place because the country had nearly zero strategic value.
6
We were bombing jungles. We should have been bombing major population centers, similar to how we bombed Tokyo. And the strategic value of Vietnam was not its location; had we broken its people, it would have put fear in other states considering allying with the USSR.
1
The efficacy of strategic bombing is dubious. And, would we want to be known as the country that bombed a third world country flat? That is literally what it would have taken, and even then...
2
1. We could not try to achieve total victory-- both the USSR and China stood behind the north with nuclear arsenals. The Cold War could not be allowed to become that hot. Beyond that, in WWII the occupied French and Poles wanted the Germans defeated. The British wanted the Germans defeated. The Russians (USSR) wanted the Germans defeated (and for the most part, defeated them). The Chinese wanted the Japanese defeated. No pun intended but that was a win/win/win/win situation and we won. In Vietnam large numbers of the Vietnamese didn't want us to win and neither did the USSR or China. QED, we didn't. As the author points out, we weren't fighting for democracy there anyway.
2. For all intents and purposes, Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris re-fought the war in their blockbuster movies during the Reagan era to the satisfaction of many Vietnam veterans struggling to make sense of their losses there and millions of rank-and-file Americans desperate to once again feel that sense of invincibility I'd felt in the 60s as a young boy playing army and watching WWII movies and TV shows that we actually did win the war-- except for those rotten folks like Cronkite and the civilian government and the dirty hippies and other traitors. Because we don't teach history in this country, few recognized how close those arguments at the time were to the arguments used by Hitler to bring down the Weimar Republic and propel himself to power when the Great Depression gave him the chance.
Beware!
4
Interesting hindsight view. Let's hope this is among the lessons learned decades later by a chastened Press. That may sadly not be the case. When I scratch my memory back to 2004 invasion of Iraq, the only image that keeps coming back is Senator Kennedy's opposition. Where was our media? Later all joined the chorus Opposing a wasted , trillion dollar boondoggle which incidentally destroyed many lives both American and Iraqi. I can't recall the media saying that it was the wrong target to go after to seek vengeance for 9/11. Footage of Secretary of State Powell presenting "evidence" of WMD at the UN suggest an uneasy person who seemed to be doing his chore without conviction. We need more latter day Cronkites I suppose!!
9
Our media were ill-informed cowards in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The Bush story line was 100% lies.
11
Bowden writes that Cronkite ‘s proclamation of a stalemated war did not noticeably change the public’s support of the war. He seems to say that as a result of this continuing support of the war Nixon won the 1968 election. And that support, he then suggests, led to Nixon still trying to win the war. During the Tet Offensive (and conceivably because of Cronkite), however, the majority ceased to support the war. Yes, Nixon won the election, but only because he was able to convince (barely) enough voters that he had a plan to extricate the United States “with honor.”
2
If only Cronkite was with us today. The most respected person in the country.
8
Too bad he's not around to say the same thing about Afghanistan.
5
There is always present in these report from Vietnam '67
the notion that the North Vietnamese were liberating South Vietnam.
Hue demonstrated that the North was far more intent on conquering
South Vietnam and murdering anyone who opposed them.
Why the demand that South Vietnam be a perfect democracy,
after all we helped Stalin and we helped China in World War II,
and neither was a Democracy.
The question that still goes unanswered in why Le Duan,
the real dictator of North Vietnam from 1960, and his clique
of War Criminals wasted the lives of so many young North Vietnamese
in order to savagely conquer South Vietnam and yet his name is
never mentioned and he and his band of murderers are never
condemned in these NY Times articles.
As for Walter Cronkite if he could not see that failed Tet Offensive
was a defeat for North Vietnam and that all wars are brutal and
savage and no one knows who the victor, if there is one, and there
was not one in Vietnam, will be until the war ends.
Isn't it time to admit that most Americans who opposed the war
did not want to fight and die for the freedom of Asians ?
2
I went to Vietnam in 1967. Opposition to the war was not based on our unwillingness to fight and die for Asian freedom. We bombed and killed and died at a horrific rate, with no meaningful results. We were lied to by every leader since Truman as to the true nature of the war. When the truth about the liars in our leadership became known, the American people said we're done.
7
David G.
Suppose the Warsaw Pact had attacked Western Europe -
would we have limited the number of soldiers we sent to fight ?
Would we have given up after the WP lost a major battle like
Hue ?
You can argue that World War II was a failure as
Eastern Europe remained under a dictatorship and we
were too late to save all those killed by the Nazis...
Roosevelt knew his actions would get us into a war
with Japan and most likely Germany and yet he lied
to us in the 1940 Presidential Campaign just as LBJ
did in 1964.
Yet, you and other say nothing about the North Vietnamese
Dictatorship that caused this tragic war.
2
"An authoritarian government can wage a foolish, losing war indefinitely, but not a democracy." The war in Afghanistan is in its 17th year; the war in Iraq is in its 15th year.
It can be argued as to whether or not the US is still a democracy, but a better explanation as to why we are still "knee-deep in little muddy(ies)" is that we now have a voluntary military as opposed to a conscripted military as in 1968. This self-selected group of volunteers can have their sacrifices exploited with impunity while conscripts have families back home resisting their children's exploitation.
9
Curiously, in 1945, the United States - a nation of citizen soldiers with very little military culture - defeated Japan and German, two countries with deeply entrenched and highly fetishized culture of militarism.
Ironically, since 1945, militarism dug its claws ever more deeply into American culture. One commentator here actually said "I value a general more than a reporter." Why? There are many generals I admire, but reporters are fundamental to the freedom of the press - a freedom this country's founders saw fit to enshrine in the Constitution. The same founders were adverse to having a large standing military. Yet here we are: a general is inherently valuable than a reporter.
The idea that Walter Cronkite should be criticized because he did his job, and the idea that Westmoreland should be worshiped because he wore stars his shoulders, really makes wonder who got the last laugh after World War II. Germany and Japan may have lost, but their ideology of militarism seems to have prospered.
10
We have become the military-industrial complex of which Eisenhower presciently warned. It remains the main reason we get into stupid wars.
7
The US defeated Japan, which stupidly fought in many ways that played to our strengths: In theaters where both aviation and naval technology could be brought to bear on a massive scale, benefiting from a massive industrial base (Yamamoto recognized that).
`
With Europe, the story is more complicated. The US didn't have the outsize role of defeating the Nazis like when defeating Imperial Japan across the Pacific. More the US helped preserve western civilization in Europe from the "isms" by both providing an enormous army and by providing enormous amounts of aid, paradoxically, to non-democratic forces (the Soviets, particularly with trucks/logistical equipment, believe food too) as well as democratic ones.
`
And even at the height of the Cold War and Vietnam conflict, with the draft and defense spending around 10% of GDP at times, don't believe the US was anywhere near as "militarized" as the Soviets, especially if post- Cold War indicators of military spend at 20% to 25% of GDP are true ...
A sad part is the Ho Chi Minh helped the US against the Japanese in WWII.
He asked the US to help declare Vietnam independent after the war but the the US didn't want to go against the French.
Ho Chi Minh eventually turned to China.
And the French eventually left anyway and left us with the mess fighting Ho Chi Minh.
11
Ho Chi Minh gave some help. Not sure it amounted much, and intentions are murky. There are hints that he was being opportunistic, to build standing internally.
`
Not sure what is meant by "eventually turned to China"? The guy was a committed communist at the time the Chinese Communists were pretty much stooges of the Soviets, in the 1920s/early 1930s. See career in the Comintern, many stays in the USSR, as well as this bit:
"Ho traveled to China to serve as a military advisor for the Chinese Communist Party after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. "
`
So pretty murky background. Interestingly enough, a CV that on the surface offered strong anti-communist types, like the Dulles', reasonable cause of concern. Maybe one reason the support wasn't there by the US in the late 1940s, versus say for Sukarno and various political groups in Indonesia?
Sounds like Afghanistan and Iraq... same ol, same ol.
I was astonished when I heard the term (years ago) that the Afghan Army soldiers had 'ARVN'd on us' - dropped their weapons and fled. Just like the Army of the Republic of Vietnam had done so many years earlier. What country? A bunch of crooks and liars who formed a corrupt enterprise (sound like Trump & Company?) and drafted everyone else but themselves to fight for it.
History repeats itself and we learn nothing.
2
Yes, the ARVN occasionally performed less than admirably and suffered from desertion, yet contrary to our experience in Afghanistan & Iraq, I am unware of ARVNs defecting to the other side.
let us reinstate the Fairness Doctrine!
7
The photo of 101st Airborne Division soldiers medivacking wounded was taken on April 1, 1968 in the A Shau Valley, which isn't close to Hue.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dallas-brown-iconic-ap-photo-showed-toll-of...
3
Tell me again why we are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
3
Government believes that if we don't have a presence there, ISIS or some other group will move in and set up support bases to attack us.
Course, if they were really serious about protecting us from harm, they'd have banned assault weapons by now. But there you go.
6
Afghanistan: The US was attacked by groups hosted by a fundamentalist government. The US then bungled a period when early wins could have been consolidated, leading to a long, protracted conflict, complicated by the fact that elements within a nominal ally, Pakistan, seem supportive the Taliban.
Iraq: The US was brought back in when the Iraq government failed to stand up to DAESH. Then you have a strange arrangement, of common cause, between the US and Iran supporting a Shiite dominate government in retaking from DAESH. The US should probably withdraw now.
Syria: Good question. Other than for defeating DAESH, see no reason to be there. Probably the US should withdraw now.
`
Forgot to mention Yemen...
The powers-that-be learned two important lessons from the Vietnam war. A volunteer army is so much better then a draft. And the idea of letting the press go wherever they want in a war zone , taking pics and video of everything they want was just insanity. So they changed, the volunteer army does the job with nary a protest and the Press only sees what the military wants it to see. We can now fight wars that go on forever with no protests or pentagon papers or anybody paying any attention at all.. Who says the military can’t lean from its mistakes.
14
While I agree with you Mr. Bowden, tellingly, a large depressingly large percentage of Conservative Americans, who condemn Cronkite as in a sense treasonous, don't care about the sandals, the determination, the ideas, ideals, Vietnamese history, and evidence of RVN corruption, and refuse to accept any of it as "truths."
I know some of them. A few are men I served with in Vietnam.
Most are so vested in ideology, whether an ideal of U.S. military victory at any cost, or politically, that they would have killed a million more Asians, and tens of thousands of more Americans in pursuit of sometime showing the validity of their ideas.
17
The Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz said that war in merely an extension of politics by other means. Westmoreland and his disciples never seem to have grasped that military maxim they had to learn at West Point and Army War College. The purpose of war is always to achieve some political objective, so there is no other kind of victory other than a political victory. Even if Cronkite and the press corps have pushed government propaganda and US stayed in Vietnam for another 20 years. What then? What would that have cost the US in the broader Cold War? How would it have damaged the US economy? The American social fabric? And what made him think North Vietnam and Viet Cong would have simply gone away with another 20 years or even 40 years?
Westmoreland seem to have believed that war was a football game, and somebody was keeping score for every enemy killed and every foot of ground taken. What he never seemed to have understood (and a lot of our leaders today don't seem to understand about Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) is that the only kind of victories that matters are political victories. War is merely an extension of politics by other means.
5
It was 50 years ago today
Uncle Walter had something to say ...
1
I miss this man.
9
My distrust of government pronouncements on military affairs and interventions commenced in the Tet era and unfortunately persists, based on the government's continuing unreliable behavior over these decades.
7
Confusing how on this same NYT page today we get to read that (1) the Vietnam War was an absolute lie and manipulation by the White House killing our own young men and (2) Trump should be ashamed not fighting that war. Who is on first?
2
Trump did not oppose the war or ever speak critically of it. He and his daddy just found a doctor who could make up a flimsly excuse for avoiding the draft. It's not that complicated to see that Trump has no honor in this.
8
If Trump's going to jump into the shooting in Florida, why wouldn't the same heel spur that prevented him from jumping into Vietnam be a problem?
2
You are correct, Trump should not be ashamed of not fighting in Vietnam. He should, however, be very ashamed of dodging the draft with his phony bone spurs. Many men who opposed the war served as medics as conscientious objectors. Many went to prison for resisting the draft. Many of us opposed the war. Trump did not. He's just a liar, a coward and a punk. I hope this allays your confusion.
4
It was the summer of 1965 in Los Angeles, California. I had just lost my battle with calculus and physics in my college classes, dashing my dreams to enter a school of architecture. A few friends of mine had been in the California Air National Guard at Van Nuys, and suggested I join up, too; you know, take some time off from college to think about what I will do for a career.
I signed up and took the Oath in mid-September. That October, President Johnson gave his speech, "Why Vietnam?" Then the draft and lottery began. And on Dec. 6, I was flying to Lackland AFB for basic training.
While working on C-97 and C-130 cargo aircraft during my six years in the Guard, I quickly came to realize, as did Mr. Cronkite, that the Vietnam War was a lost cause. As the saying went, "You can kill the enemy but not the idea." I lost friends over there. A few were honored for their heroism and bravery. Some brought back their own stories of terror, jungle firefights with anunseen enemy. Some memorialized at the Vietnam War Memorial.
One colleague from my part-time job came home to a parade honoring him and others, at Camp Pendleton. He came to visit in his dress blues and looked every bit the hero. Then, he told us he was getting a medal for doing things that crushed his soul.
While on a trip to Maryland in 1988, I stopped in DC on a drizzly day to visit that Wall honoring our lost heroes from that dreadful war. I cried with total strangers. We hugged like brothers.
6
" An authoritarian government can wage a foolish, losing war indefinitely, but not a democracy."
That tells me that there's still hope for the US...even with a wanna be dictator.
5
Obviously we are not a democracy. We specialize in foolish, losing wars.
1
Obviously the war could of been won, but not as politicians war but as
a first class effort reminiscent of WWII. It would of meant drafting
people like me, getting the Congress to declare war and putting
the great society on permanent hold. All in all a price to high to support that corrupt Southern Vietnamese administration. The sad part is the 50K US soldiers and the 100's of thousand Vietnamese that paid the price for an ill conceived 'war'.
venture.
6
The North Vietnamese were willing to sacrifice lives to an unimaginable level. They had no willingness to surrender and no victory short of total annihilation was possible.
Not sure many North Vietnamese had a choice, nor that they had much independent information for making assessments. North Vietnam was a severe dictatorship/garrison state by 1965, possibly led by some implacable, violent folks (possibly, like the likes of Le Duan, not Ho Chi Minh necessarily). Also a state that got away with imperialism in Lao and Cambodia for years (with Laos, about six years before the US started to intervene on a large scale in 1965), with little condemnation by the world.
"An authoritarian government can wage a foolish, losing war indefinitely, but not a democracy."
Isn't that what the US is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq?
4
Cronkite is a painful reminder of the sad, low depths of network news today with preening news readers wearing too much makeup and trying to learn hand gestures to make them look thoughtful .
4
But if Donald Trump was around, he would have "rushed in to help, even without a rifle..."
6
Mr, Bowden, you write: "Those who argue today that the press, and Cronkite, lost the war are correct in only one sense....[they] were not completely unbiased..."
I disagree. Those that blame the press are not correct in any sense. The war was lost through a combination of faulted policy which was poorly executed, ill-conceived military strategy which was poorly executed and most importantly, a capable enemy.
7
Walter Cronkite has been succeeded by Sean Hannity. Hannity is no Cronkite.
4
Followed, not "succeeded"...
2
@HapinOregon
Thanks. But I don't like either word.
1
For a large part of the Viêt Nam war our strategy was, hold on until the Viet Cong have to negotiate for peace. Now I hear exactly the same thing about Afghanistan. Hold on until the Taliban have to negotiate for peace. I guess we really don't learn.
6
When I was 19 (1964) I read an account of the British counter-insurgency in Malaya, where the British had a ten-to-one advantage in forces over an opponent who lacked the popular support and strategic resources of the NLF in Vietnam. I told everyone that would listen that the US would have to make at least a similar commitment of military resources and time. I guess that was Lansdale's argument as well. no one listened to either of us.
When I was 20 I dropped out of college. When I was 21 I got my draft notice, my first week of Coast Guard boot camp. When I was 22 I was in the burn ward at Fort Sam Houston. It was just after TET and the place was wall-to-wall. You'd be surprised how many soldiers get burned in war. I heard stories of whole companies being wiped out in firefights and huge ambushes in the jungle, rocket attacks any time of day or night.
If anything, the news media were late in coming to the realization that the war was not being won.
5
Vietnam was "lost" long before 1968.
In 1918 none of the victorious allies would accept US President Woodrow Wilson's idea of self-determination for colonies.
In 1919-20 none of the victorious allies would meet with Vietnamese political leader Ho Chi Minh. Russia would, did and supported him.
In 1954, after France's defeat, Geneva agreements stated that a nationwide referendum was to be held.
In 1955 the election, controlled and won by Vietnamese President Diem, with US support, ended any unification thoughts. Three days after the vote, Diem proclaimed the creation of the Republic of Vietnam and himself as its president.
In 1955 Diem severed economic relations with France and withdrew from the French Union. It should be noted that neither the USSR nor the PRC had major objections to Diem's creating a new state in the southern half of Vietnam.
3
The cynicism that US government lies during the Vietnam war created is still eating away at the heart of America. The mistrust of federal authority now allows the Russians to feed a large sector of the population with hateful propaganda, designed to divide the country and create a civil war.
3
To be fair, American involvement in the Vietnam war lasted 10 years. Before that another democracy (France) waged foolish war in Vietnam for 8 years. Should we mention the foolish war in Iraq? Seems to me democracies are prone to foolish wars as much as authoritarian countries.
5
Thankfully, there is no longer one voice, with one set of facts.
I was a big fan of Walter Cronkite, but this wasn't his best moment. But then unlike Mark Bowden, I value a general more than a reporter.
"I value a general more than a reporter."
Why?
5
The book, "Black April," details the betrayal of the South Vietnamese people and the ARVN. The US did not fulfill its commitments to provide spare parts, air cover, and other types of aid that could have enabled the South Vietnamese people to avoid the repression of a communist government.
1
If Cronkite was alive today and made his assessment, he would be attacked as a liberal who hates America. Not because he was mistaken, but because it embarrassed the president and there is nothing more important than that. To this day, there are people who are convinced things were turning in our favor and the U.S. could have won if we had stayed in Vietnam another 10 or 15 years.
25
Having just missed going into Vietnam - I was discharged in 1962 - I watched it unfold in the papers and on TV for a decade. I cheered our guys, loathed the Commies, and waited for victory. As the years ticked off I began to wonder if it would ever end and how would it end? The NCO's I served with 'won' WWII because the enemy's government surrendered after their armies were smashed, but here there was no pincer movement on the enemy's capitol nor large formations to be destroyed. It might never end.
Cronkite, whom I trusted completely, spoke the words I needed to hear to know that I wasn't wrong in my growing suspicions. Only one side would or could quit and walk away. We were going to be the losers here no matter how we prettied up the pig. The miracle was that Walter wasn't destroyed for saying it.
22
Excellent writing by Mark Bowden. Although the Vietnam War still had support from both Democrats and Republicans, Cronkite's reporting corroborated what we were seeing on the home front: returning warfighters who were injured, or dead.
One year later after his graduation, a football player at my high school returned to our Thanksgiving Day game without a leg. It was as sobering as Cronkite's broadcast. And yes, it took Nixon and Kissinger six years to get us out of that war.
And we did it again in Iraq. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
18
Remember all this like it was yesterday...my time in VN had come and gone before the place was popular (USMC 12th Marines 63/64) and I was in 68 a sophomore at college, married with a one year old daughter. But I had many friends who were in I Corps during Tet 1968. So when Walter made these comments it all hit like a hammer. It was one of those moments you never forget.
17
Are we not in a similar situation today with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What are we really doing there? We're wasting lives and resources in wars that are never going to end. These wars like the Vietnamese war are civil wars with the addition of extremist religion. We need a Cronkite today that will go to Iraq and Afghanistan and say flat out that these wars are un-winnable. We have to stop being the policemen of the world. We have to stop being so gung-ho war. We have to stop believing that we are going to win wars with advisors and a minimum number of troops. Cronkite, a World War II correspondent, looked at an un-winnable war and stated the obvious, that we had to leave Vietnam. We could declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, leave and then in about a months the American public will forget the wars ever happened. We have to remain vigilant, but we don't need continuous wars running in the American background.
25
The Viet Namese conflict was based on a lie by LBJ related to a Gulf of Tonkin resolution blaming the North Viet Namese for something they didn't do. But the American public only found out the truth decades later. Thanks to the repeal of the draft and medical advances, far fewer Americans have died in the Middle East wars but the costs in dollars have been huge. Troops returning with mental or physical ailments will costs US taxpayers several trillion dollars in the coming decades.
The costs related to the Viet Nam war helped force the US off of the gold standard and exported inflation around the world. We have yet to pay the butcher's bill for the costs of the Middle East wars and the Bush/Trump tax cuts. Those are being left for the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers.
4
Some elements in this country may "need continuous wars". Never-ending wars demand constant $$ input to the military-industrial complex. Maybe the military doesn't want to win because after the war, the USA could spend its wealth on something other than weapons---and the generals would have less opportunity to pin more stars and bars to their uniforms.
1
Great read from Mr. Bowden on the 50th anniversary of the Mr. Cronkite's comments. It doesn't downplay or overplay their significance and puts them in the proper historical context. I expect nothing less from one of our great journalists.
10
To claim that the media had no real effect on the public and political reactions to the war, which Mr. Bowden infers, is amazingly silly. LBJ's famous comment was that if Cronkite was against the war, the American middle class was lost too. The history of media content on the war prior to Tet was 80% positive, by 1969 it was 80% negative, which brought energy and expansion to the antiwar movement. Even once Vietnamization was working and the ARVN repulsed the Easter Invasion, the media were still reporting negatively and basically ignored how well things were actually going for the South. The pressure on Congress mounted, Nixon left office, and after that the aid was cut and further air support forbidden, which sealed the fate of the South.
Cronkite visited then-Lieutenant General Fred Weyand, commander of II Field Force, Vietnam. Weyand later described their interaction: “After Tet, General Westmoreland sent Walter Cronkite out to interview me. I was in command of the forces in the south around Saigon and below, and I was proud of what we’d done…. So Walter came down and he spent about an hour and a half interviewing me. And when we got done, he said, ‘Well, you’ve got a fine story. But I’m not going to use any of it, because I’ve been up to Hue. I’ve seen the thousands of bodies up there in mass graves, and I’m determined to do all in my power to bring this war to an end as soon as possible.” At that point he went from being a reporter to an antiwar activist.
16
So glad you were proud of what you'd done. You've certainly earned the right to your words - you were there, and I've never suited up for anything military. But do you really think that Walter Cronkite was WRONG? Viet Nam was an unmitigated DISASTER. For EVERYONE involved, including the so-called victors. How many lives lost, both the dead and the irreparably wounded, physically AND mentally, were worth it? Was it really worth the lives of 2 million people?
I get that you have a different take on war, especially having served. I will NEVER see war as anything other than an excuse to exert deadly power over mostly innocent people in the pursuit of abuse of power and for profit.
7
You need to study the Easter Offensive more closely at CGSC at Fort Leavenworth. A defensive victory is all the Thieu could claim. The GVN STRATEGIC position had been weakend. Below the DMZ and along the almost 500 miles of SV's western edge most of the outlying bases in the thinly populated mountains had fallen. The NVA was now encamped closer than ever to the populous and crucial coastal lowlands. Easter 72 was the NVA first attempt at large scale armor/infantry combined action and the learning curve was steep but they would learn. In 1975 for the first time they carried over 100 SAM's south to provide protective umbrella against air attacks. In 1972 ARVN still had us running their logistics in a functioning and efficient manner and that had vanished by 1975.
2
The only critical point of the Easter Invasion was that the ARVN did fight extremely well, and the NVA took tremendous losses of men and equipment. With time and the support we'd promised them, the South could have finally prevailed as Russia stopped pouring in billions and billions in supplies. The most important learning that they did in Hanoi after that invasion was when they saw that the aid to the South was being cut and as Le Duan said, "the Americans will not come back now even if we offer then candy". That was the green light for Russia to resupply all those lost tanks, artillery, SAMs, etc, and Hanoi to draft hundreds of thousands of young men, and prepare for two years to invade the weakened South with overwhelming force.
1
I read (somewhere) that if Otto Von Bismarck had remained alive and in charge of German foreign policy in 1914 there never would have been a WWI. Theoretical, of course. But, it is a thought that gets one thinking.
The Johnson White House never understood the workings of SE Asia. The Truman White House rejected (3 years earlier) the same case fire agreement the Eisenhower White House signed off on. The GWBush White House rushed into war and occupation in Iraq in 2003 while his father's administration was very careful not to enter Baghdad in 1991.
One prevalent message that is presented to Americans regarding foreign ground wars--especially in Asia--is wars are easy to enter, difficult to leave. I don't dispute that, but would add the caveat: particularly if leadership is incompetent.
I think it has been established that America can't (and should not) engage N Korea in war. This presents all sorts of problems and offers opportunity to point fingers at several administrations, but this option is better than invading N Korea.
I wonder if D Trump understands that.
5
The answer is NO. Trump understand anything? Nope.
1
To say that Cronkite's pronouncement changed opinions, began a shift in public perception and moved the country to oppose the Vietnam war is typical of the sort of delusionary hubris which is unfortunately part of the problem so many of us have with journalists.
You would like to think this is the story, because it's a good story, but it's just a story you made up, unconnected to reality and unsubstantiated by studies.
As I recall, by 1968 most everyone who had thought about the war, and that was most Americans, had already made up their minds. The Tet offensive and Cronkite's comments simply validated previously formed opinions against the war, but did nothing to dissuade those who felt America should be there, had to be there to "fight Commies."
There were only 3 TV networks then and few national news publications, Time, Newsweek, the NYT and the Washington Post. This limited expression of dissent but it also meant there were more powerful influences on public opinion because viewers were limited in their sources of information.
What really turned the tide of opinion was not pronouncements from the "most trusted man in America" but the nightly clips of soldiers fighting and dying and being interviewed. The soldiers conveyed the hopelessness of the effort far more effectively than Cronkite, or David Brinkley or John Chancellor or any of the "thought leaders" of the day.
9
It was not an either or situation. It took both sources to all a shift in public perception. Then, as now, there was a concerted effort to demagogue the issue, to cloud and slant the perception of reality through group scapegoating. As the youth of America spoke out, a great swath of America was turned against our own progeny, to invalidate their perceptions and make them the enemy. Then the legitimate media was scapegoated, as they began reporting the realities. Walter C, in group psychology terms, filled the role of "Emotional Leader" one whose perception is trusted when the group I see not in the position to see for themselves. The concerte pieces of information that he delivered that day was nearly not as important as the fact he was in a position to burst the 'possession' much of the public was gripped by in this group scapegoat (us against them) complex, which cripples rational thought and analysis of a situation. The sources of an "Emotional Leader" whose voice of confrontation can break open such a bubble of delusion, such a group complex have been systematically scapegoated for years, all done in the knowledge that in the absence of such leaders of credible information, of trust and emotional truth, control of the very perception of reality can be hijacked and manipulated towards the ends of the demagogue, i.e. Sidelining the capacity to reason. The press, the non partisan part of Justice depart and security services, are being scapegoated leaving no ELs voice.
1
At the risk of offending the media's sense of self-importance, it wasn't Walter Cronkite's opinions, or the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, or the gassy newspaper editorializing that turned public opinion against the Vietnam war. What turned the public against the Vietnam was the ongoing existence of the military draft. The draft - and the possibility that any young man could go to war against his will and be killed - is what really caused people to take to the streets in protest. For the same reason, the lack of a military draft today is the reason that the US wars in the middle east are not being protested by people at all. Out of sight, out of mind.
If there was no draft during the Vietnam War, people would not have taken to the streets and the US would probably still be fighting over there today, sad to say.
77
Exactly correct, and a hugely important lesson learned by the right wing and its patrons. People with a personal stake in a war are enormously concerned and motivated to oppose it if it seems unnecessary. People who know that someone else will do all the fighting and dying are generally not so concerned and are therefore much more malleable.
8
Donald "Bone Spur" Trump, William " Is" Clinton and Richard "Other Priorities" Cheney dodged the draft.
While George "Texas Air Ace" Bush was patrolling the skies of Texas defending against an attack by the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Air Force.
The ethnic sectarian united history of Vietnam survived the socioeconomic political educational civil war backed by foreign powers. There was no North nor South Vietnam.
1
We really do need to reinstate the draft lottery with ABSOLUTELY NO deferments for kids of congressional representatives or CEOs.
3
There is a hard lesson in this history. Despite Cronkite, despite Halberstam, despite the Pentagon papers, despite the student demonstrations, the voters of the US narrowly voted for Richard Nixon, a man completely imbued with anti communist ideology, the same ideology that got us into the VN quagmire in the first place, and the war went on and on. Lesson, it's the voters who count the most in this country. If you don't like what's going on, get out and vote.
11
xI am often astonished at our hubris when we say that we are training "our allies" in counter-insurgency when the result is most often failure. It seems to me that they could be training us.
5
I try to explain Cronkite to my kids. Hard to do. They cannot comprehend.
One-man. Trusted. Dignified.
"And thats the way it is...."
I miss those days.
9
More people trusted what Walter Cronkite said than the sum total of what they heard from Washington bureaucrats. Mr. Cronkite's main objective was always to be as honest and forthright as humanly possible. He and various war correspondents "told the truth more consistently than American officials".
Every weeknight at 5:30 p.m. (Wisconsin time) my parents tuned in the CBS News show with Mr. Cronkite. I found myself doing the same when I was in junior high school through my entire life until he retired in 1981. He was more than a mere news anchor - he was a man of integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness. I will never forget seeing him take off his eye glasses to announce the death of JFK. He was holding himself together with every fiber of his being so he would not break down on national television.
Other than Tom Brokaw, there has not been a news anchor since Mr. Cronkite that I actually watch on a nightly basis, much less trust a word that comes from their mouth as they read from their laptop screen. I miss and long for Walter Cronkite dearly, especially these days.
11
In September 1966 I was a 19 year old college sophomore. In October 1966 I was young Army recruit. I must admit that I never fully understood why we were in Vietnam. We were told about defending American interest, about the domino theory, the threat of communism and the desire for democracy by the South Vietnamese. We were told we were there so that those who died before us should not have died in vain. And we were there because it was the right thing to do. So, now I'm 70, retired with children and grandchildren and you know what? I still don't know why we were there. I don't know why my friends were grievously wounded and one of my high school classmates died. I don't know why but I do know that my life was changed forever.
If I could go back I would still enlist. I would feel the same duty and obligation to my country. But if I went back now I'd at least understand that we could not win and I would make every effort I could to protest that miserable war and see to its end. Its more than 51 years since I enlisted and the one thing I know for sure is that we were betrayed. We were lied to. And too many young kids, 18, 19 and twenty year olds died for nothing. Absolutely nothing. What a terrible waste.
93
Jay,
Well said my friend!
Jim Symons
USMC, Third Marines, '67
1
If you could go back, you would still enlist?
And then you say you would make every effort to protest that miserable law.
So you would join the Army and then protest?
I agree you learned you were lied to and betrayed.
But what, exactly, did you learn?
1
Ideas and ideals are the reasons the Republicans will lose in November.
There is a scarcity of both in the House, Senate and especially the Trump Administration.
That said, the Democrats better get going. They need to articulate better their ideas and ideals. It is not enough to have egg-headed discussions between themselves. They need to present their ideas and ideals in every day language.
No platitudes please.
7
Hue was a huge drawn out battle that effectively wiped the Viet Cong from existence along with their other defeats across the country. The war was easily winnable if you took restrictions off by invading and toppling North Vietnam. You dont fight a war that long and not turn to total war to finish it. Yes South Vietnam was corrupt but so was Taiwan and South Korea. They are the young tigers in todays economy. NVK memos detail the extent and lamenation of the Viet Cong destruction during the TET offensive. We needed to press the advantage and invade the north with a counter offensive at the time.
2
The US killed three to four million people in its failed effort to defeat the Vietnamese. Are you saying the US should have killed eight million people?
4
You ought to tour the 25 miles of underground tunnels and fortification outside Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) before you embrace that Rambo bull that America ever stood a chance of winning that war against a determined, entrenched enemy who thought, just as the Confederates did, they were defending their homeland against the raping foreign hordes.
Amazing anyone still believes that drivel about how if the politicians had just let the American soldiers fight, the soldiers would have won. America was defeated on the battle field by better, more motivated soldiers, period.
4
It appears the answer to your question is yes. Billy - could you respond with a yes or no?
We are waging a foolish, losing war in Afghanistan. So what are we?
We are doing the same in the Middle East. Same question.
4
Gee, someone told the TRUTH!
4
The US left Vietnam because it was peripheral to any of that country's interests. It was everything to the Vietnamese who won.
4
Stalemate? Hardly. We lost. Just like we will in Afghanistan. That's another unwinnable war.
7
President Trump thinks we will win, but I also think we will not win. I hope something happens and common sense prevails and we get out of there.
1
My husband was a producer for ABC News. The military press briefings during the Vietnam War were sarcastically (and cynically) called, The Five O’Clock Follies.
Journalists knew there was a huge credibility gap between the truth and the official reports. This began the time when our government’s word was no longer trusted.
One of the last official Five O’Clock Follies’ military spokesmen said, (paraphrasing after all this time)…”we weren’t perfect but we outlasted Fiddler on the Roof.”
Tragic. But, many journalists did their best to get the truth out there.
34
Did your husband meet or know of the North Vietnamese spy Pham Xuan An whose cover was a journalist for "Time" and "Reuters"?
See "Punji Trap" by Luke Hunt
3
"It was a notoriously corrupt, one-party, authoritarian state whose only virtue, in American eyes, was that it was not Communist. It survived only through an exorbitant investment of American money, guns and lives."
Reminds me of Iraq...
6
now Iraq is owned by Iran. Time to turn off the money tap.
1
Perhaps the anchors of Fox news should be sent to Afghanistan for a week. And Megan Kelly too.
Journalism of the type seen in the glory days of CBS news - Murrow, Cronkite, Severeid, Kuralt is a distant memory. CNN is a joke. Our "free press" is so controlled by corporations, and "freedom of speech" has been perverted by the likes of Twitter and Facebook, and even the NYTimes insists on publishing travelogue front and center on its web page. Instead of telling us what we need to know, the news outlets, all of them, tell us what they think we'll buy.
A sad state indeed.
3
How was it that the press, people of integrity like Cronkite, could arrive at obvious conclusions when the leaders of the military and the office of the Commander in Chief did not?
The answer was not 'blowing in the wind.' Military people like Westmoreland knew what was happening. He and colleagues were not idle or stupid men. They had vested interests in keeping a losing war going.
They were actively lying, caught in the web of their own internal mental deceit. In the process, they caused their own men, not to mention the Vietnamese civilians they were sworn to protect, to slaughtered. Generals like Westmoreland were military failures, Cronkite a hero.
49
The brass certainly knew the truth and failed to protect the country by not being honest with the politicians, but worse, not being honest with the men under their command. Why do you think there are no statues to the generals like Westmoreland and his cohorts? All the statues that I see of the Vietnam War are the sailors and soldiers who did the actual fighting, and dying. They are the ones worthy of statues and of our honor.
3
South Vietnam was an artificial state created in 1954 and by military force we tried to create a functioning political state that responded to the needs of the populace and won their allegiance which never came close to happening. The populace did know that the Viet Minh had kicked out the French and that almost 50% of ARVN's senior officers had served in either the French Army or the "national " army of Emperor Bao Dai. They did know that 800,000 Catholics had come down from the North and were receiving favorable treatment from Saigon in contrast to the treatment they received at hands of appointed Saigon district and provincial officials.
Cronkite, in Vietnam a week before his infamous broadcast in the States, told the American TV public, “First and simplest, the Viet Cong suffered a military defeat” - defeat they never fully recovered from.
When Mr. Bowden was out selling his book a few months ago, I asked him about the massacre of civilians in Hue and he hemmed and hawed, and said some were taken captive. I mentioned that one of the first things I was told when I got to Vietnam was that the VC didn't take captives and they made use of women and children without remorse. It was ironic that a Marine who was there at Hue at the time also asked about the slaughter (there was a notice that all teachers, politicians, government officials, etc, were to report somewhere within the city at a particular time - they were never seen again). Bowden made an effort deflect and dismiss the point and almost excuse what the VC had done, but he was taken to the cleaners, just as the Burns’ documentary has been by most Vietnam veterans – neither Burns nor Bowden understand military operations, nor can they claim a legacy of ever serving their country. Hawking their wares doesn't count.
11
Not sure I understand your point. That Cronkite was wrong to suggest that the war was, at best, a stalemate when he had earlier said that Tet was a military defeat for the VC? From the current perspective, 50 years later, there was no inconsistency. Tet was a military debacle for the VC, but that defeat did not and never would translate into a victory for the US or the South Vietnamese. That the VC ruthlessly killed their own? If I recall correctly, Burns addressed this in his film. Regardless, how does VC brutality bear on Cronkite's conclusion that the war was unwinnable or his broader legacy?
3
"...taken to the cleaners, just as the Burns’ documentary has been by most Vietnam veterans." I'd be interested in some documentation of this claim. My brother, who served two rounds in Vietnam, and went on to become career army, told me early in the series that unlike the earlier documentary on Vietnam, Burns got it just right.
2
"I mentioned that one of the first things I was told when I got to Vietnam was that the VC didn't take captives and they made use of women and children without remorse"
With all due respect, how does "I was told" make something true?
1
So, how have we been in Afghanistan for over 15 years now with no end in sight? It was one of the lessons the military learned in Viet Nam. We can participate in wars only until public support for the effort dissipates. Public support dissipates when its sons come home in boxes and when needed domestic spending is used to fight distant wars that are hard to explain.
So in the aftermath of Viet Nam, we moved to a volunteer army. Only those who wanted to go, or who needed the money joined up rather than compulsory military duty under the draft. That took the sting out of the anti-war movement. And then we decided to just borrow to finance our wars so that domestic spending continued unabated as did the wars. We have spent over $6.0 trillion in the "War on Terror" and our US Debt held by foreign governments is about that amount $6.3 trillion with China and Japan holding most of it.
It is President Eisenhower's warning about the Military Industrial Complex in this country coming true. We used to have a war every 10 years or so. Korea in 1950-53, Viet Nam 1964-73, Grenada/Lebanon, 1982, Kuwait(Gulf War I)1991, Iraq (Gulf War II)/Afghanistan 2002- , Syria 2014 - , North Korea 2018? - . So we have come full circle, back to North Korea.
43
Thank you for this series. It has been well written and researched in general. I can have one criticism of this piece. "battle was reminiscent of the worst urban fighting in World War II, which Cronkite had witnessed as a young reporter" The worst urban fighting in World War II would have been in Stalingrad or Berlin, and Cronkite was nowhere near either of these battles. He did fly on a bombing mission over Europe and rode a glider into Eindhoven. Please don't start making fake news from history. We have enough problems.
6
Edward Lansdale features in many books about Vietnam. He tried to get the power structure to see the real problem. That problem was nationalism. Vietnam had many chances to become a democracy. The French never tried to set up schools and hospitals and all the other services that make a modern state. The Viet Minh claimed the nationalist high ground and when they got the French out in 1954, the communists took over North Vietnam and spent the next 5 years making the North into the standard Soviet style state.
The leaders of South Vietnam never did all that was necessary to make a democratic state, but the Diem Brothers had to have it all for themselves and even when they were ousted (killed) in 1964, their successors didn't play the political game at all.
It was South Vietnamese corruption and Eisenhower's and Kennedy's and Johnson's unwillingness to be the one who 'lost Vietnam' that led to the wistful thinking that cost the US billions of dollars and over 58 thousand dead. The Vietnamese dead number between 2 and 3 million.
11
Except....JFK tried to PREVENT escalation in Vietnam and paid for it with his life.
2
50 years later Communist governments run both China and Vietnam. It's not a problem, today. It's not a problem because Communist bureaucrats and transnational corporate bureaucrats figured out a way to a buck off each other’s political power.
And our causalities are not limited to the 58,220 dead and nearly 153,000 American wounded Vietnam War combatants. The final tally of loses continues to mount as millions of good paying American jobs were outsourced by American corporations to communist countries. Communism is not a problem today.
So what were these Americans dying in rice paddies really fighting to protect? It certainly wasn’t their freedom to partake and enjoy a prosperous American way of life.
33
A very timely article.
We still have Cronkites amongst ourselves but we have Fox and friends who don’t care for the truth and endlessly brainwash their followers.
32
One omission that touches on today's events: The student movement that turned against the war and swept so many campuses and sent many draft-eligible young men into exile. My own tenure at the head of the CBS News Bureau in 66-67 prior to Hue delivered only stories about the "real war", so much so that some of us - we later found out - were threatened with expulsion from the country by the corrupt South Vietnamese government. That corruption was a consistent part of our reporting along with our colleague competitors at NBC and ABC. But what we did not realize until we returned home was just how powerful the student movement had become. Contrary to today's millennial they did watch the network news that was then the principle source of news for as much as 85% of the American public. The students' role, as now in the gun debate, should not be underestimated.
101
This is sobering. And, sadly, we are doing it again....
11
Good journalism. Thanks.
4
Replace the word Vietnam by Afghanistan and everything that Edward Lansdale said would still ring true. If you have to teach the Afghans how to fight, you have already lost the war. Except this time, the young men sent to die or maimed by the commander in chief with bone spur in his ankle are not conscripts. Hence we can go the shopping malls with a clear conscience.
21
Regarding Afghanistan, "teaching the Afghans how to fight" is not even a viable statement. Obviously, you represent people in the US who, like the English in 1849-52 and the Russians far more recently, do not know the Afghans at all. We support a corrupt, non-unified tribe in Afghanistan against people who want no outsiders in their country. Just as you do not know the Vietnamese - no-one had to teach them how to fight, either. The US simply supported a group who saw nothing to fight for, again just another corrupt regime; we could not even identify and support those who truly wanted a non-Communist united Vietnam. They were there - our leadership let them down during the conflict and abandoned them afterwards.
3
Growing up in India for the first 23 years of my life, I think I have a reasonable understanding of Afghan psyche way more than most Americans. USA is currently spending significant amount of money to train Afghans to fight Taliban and now ISIS insurgency. It is/was a fool's errand for the west (or anybody) to get entangled in the Afghan or for that matter in the Vietnamese civil war. By the way, contrary to standard western propaganda Soviet Union had significant popular support in the cities like Kabul and Herat. They were often heavy handed but did introduce modern reforms including women's education. These were bitterly opposed by the fundamentalist mostly Pashtun tribes in an essentially medieval tribal country. For geostrategic reasons West along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan supported and militarily helped these backward fundamentalist groups including Al-Qaeda. The rest is history.
3
Strike 1: Suckered into the region by the French.
Strike 2: No physical threat to America or Americans.
Strike 3: Led by a POTUS with no backbone.
Strike 4: Supporting a government that hated individual freedom.
We were doomed before the first soldier had loaded his pack and got on a plane to go there.
22
In 1789, When Nguyen Hue defeated the Chinese invaders camped near Hanoi, it was the 7th time since AD 937, that the Vietnamese had defeated the Chinese in pitched battle. The Viets were at their very core, the people who through foreign invaders out of their land.
In 1858, the French invaded Vietnam, and it took them a year to win that first great battle. It took them till 1913 to destroy last group of resistance fighters. They proceeded to exploit and rape the country for roughly 100 years, until the Japanese invaded during WW II, and the French surrendered without a fight. About 1933, the French colonial government announced an amnesty. The non-communist nationalist resistance group turned in their guns. They were rounded up and executed. The communist did not come forward. After the massacre, only the communist resistance group was left to continue the fight against the French. During WW II, only Ho Chi Minh and his communist fighters fought successfully against the Japanese. He was aided with guns, supplies and money by the US OSS. He was our man in Vietnam against the Japanese. By 1954, when these Viets defeated the French, they were national heros, three times over. It is hard to believed anyone could undermine their national popularity. They had earned the mandate of heaven.
David Lindsay Jr. is the author of "The Tay Son Rebellion, Historical Fiction of Eighteenth-century Vietnam," and blogs at The TaySonRebellion.com and InconvenientNewsWorldwide.wordpress.com
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At which point, the Communist approach to dealing with disagreement became de facto law, and you got shot dead because you didn't bow before the Dear Leader.
"Land Reform" = Kill one villager for every 160 in the village.
"Political Freedom" = Vote for Communist Party.
"Agricultural Reform" = Starvation.
Yeah, the Viet Cong were the nicest people, ever.
3
Thank you, David. And may I add that, Ho Chi Minh and his fighters also rescued many pilots and aircrews whose planes went down into the jungles of Burma after flying resupply junkets "over the hump" — the mighty Himalayan peaks. Some ran out of fuel, some were shot down by the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh rescued many before capture by the Japanse. So, when he want a revolution against the French and the Diem regime, he looked to Washington for empathy and support.
But Eisenhower was bound, he said, by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, to support the French despiite Minh's heroism in WW2.
5
Imagine getting drafted out of law school soon after Cronkite's pronouncement. Most of those I hung with didn't need to wait for the Pentagon Papers to know the government was lying about the war. It was there plain as day on the nightly news. I filed for CO status based on an illegal war....which I didn't get, of course, since selective conscientious objection was not recognized. To this day I hold onto the memory of how long the war endured after '68, in awe of the power of the government to continue down a militaristic path in the face of protest. 6 more years. Then just 40 years later a plunge into Iraq on lies. History may not repeat but it certainly rhymes. How much do the Republicans want to give the military this year?
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Reinstate the draft. Make a law that whenever the US goes to war, the very first young people to be drafted must be the sons and daughters of Congressmen and Congresswomen.
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And immediately impose a war tax to pay for the folly.
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I grew up watching this war every night at 6:30 with a father who was an officer in the air force. At the time, my father was a moderate republican who served because he felt it was his duty as an American, and he believed he was fighting for the future of America. Now, he is a conservative republican who sees that war as an error. At the time I was anti-war and was two years away from burning my draft card. I watched Cronkite, and I believed what I saw. Now, i am more critical, and i know a lot more than i did then. But at the end of the day, any assessment calling the war a stalemate was essentially correct.
3
Lost the war? 1.5 million Vietnamese and 58,000+ Americans lost their lives and many others succumbed to cancers (from Agent Orange) PTSD, homelessness and other mental illnesses; hardly a recipe for anyone winning. In addition, the unification of Vietnam resulted in a prosperous society- unlike the destruction of Iraq, which lead to the Middle East's current dystopian nightmare. The media helped galvanized opposition to a decades old stalemate during Vietnam yet cheered (with some notable exceptions) our removal of Saddam Hussein. Of course by the time Iraq I & II rolled around, out military and civilian leaders learned the value of "sanitizing' the horrors of war, in order to sell it.
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In 1967, as an ABC News correspondent in Vietnam, I interviewed the head of the United Buddhist Church who told me, "If the Communists win, we will probably lose our religion, but that is better than losing our country. At least the communists are Vietnamese." ABC elected not to use my report on the interview and regularly deleted paragraphs in stories questioning Pentagon pronouncements about bombing, civilian casualties and pacification. Our senior correspondent, Howard K. Smith, spent two weeks in Saigon talking to generals and diplomats (but not us lowly correspondents) took to the roof of the Caravel Hotel to film "One Man's Opinion" insisting there was, as General Westmoreland kept insisting, "light at the end of the tunnel." There wasn't.
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There wasn't even a tunnel.
1
I was in Vietnam with my son in December and January. We visited the war memorials, talked with local guides and citizens, and spend many days in and around various villages. As an emerging economic force in SE Asia the war is an important part if their history. The thing that allowed the North and South to be finally united was the sheer "will of the people" to finally have one, sovereign nation of their own...not occupied by Chinese, French or Americans. What they have built in the years since the war, at great effort, is that nation, with their ancestral culture restored and intact. They won. They really won.
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I also recently visited Vietnam, a year ago for an emotional month's return after 48 years. I concur with all Harley has to say, though throughout the country I detected especially in the south an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the lack of freedom of speech & press, and was occasionally pleased to see the somewhat covert display of the RVN Colors, the three red strips on a background of yellow.
Stalemate could be the description of our country at this moment. It is, however, being interrupted by now by some very courageous young people finally, some forward movement! Let's get moving, again, and save our country from the very unpleasant status quo.
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I don't remember Walter Cronkite's pronouncement, but I definitely remember Eric Sevareid's 1966 assessment that the Vietnam War could not be won. It was completely shocking to American, including this young adult.
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NK, I am now 73 years old and I remember all of it. I was in the California Air National Guard from 1965-71. Today, there are no more Walter Cronkites or Eric Severeids or Ed Morrows. Despite relatively good reportage from PBS, CBS, NBC, CNN and ABC, it's all shouted down by the fact-free gas bags of FOX and other right wing media outlets and social media.
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David Ohman
Hear! Hear!
2
The war was winnable, just not at a price America could afford to pay. I remember reading McNamara's biography where he talked about a report he received from Pentagon analysts diagnosing the progress on the war. It said we could win, but it would take 5 years and 2 million American soldiers on the ground. That was a non-starter. America can't fight these wars of attrition. The public won't tolerate an endless draft of their young people, especially for a war whose rationale was theoretical at best. At the height of our involvement in Vietnam, we had "only" about 500,000 troops there. The effect of that was a stalemate that was having an extremely corrosive effect on the society.
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@Michael: No. As this article demonstrates yet again, that war was not winnable by the West, simply because the strategies and beliefs did not correlate with what was needed to win over the populace. And you are falling into the familiar trap when you refer to yet another "report...from Pentagon analysts..." - another diagnosis that was propping up the idea of 'if only we had this...or that...or the other' - more troops, more time, blah blah. The Lansdale book that is coming out will portray accurately the difference between the situation in the Philippines that Lansdale successfully ran (albeit with at times regrettable CIA actions), and what he encountered in VN, which he ultimately saw he could not win. It is a valuable resource to read in understanding the war's makeup.
2
America could not have won the war without completely destroying the country itself which was really just a battlefield of wills. And our will, and the will of our allies there, wasn't enough.
If we ignore the fact that it was also a war of independence (from French colonial rule) we also lose the moral war.
Therefore, the war was not winnable by any reasonable standard.
7
I'm told there were anti-gridlock signs at intersections in Hong Kong which said, "Do not enter box [intersection] unless you see way out." It's an worthwhile guideline if you're going to wage war on countries which are not directly threatening the US. Re Iraq, George H W Bush understood that, but George W Bush didn't - or didn't care. Even if what you say is true, and the US could have militarily subdued North Vietnam, we'd have been yet another foreign power occupying Vietnam, with no functional popular government to hand things over to. Do we have a couple of mideastern countries which demonstrate how untenable that situation is?
One of the refreshing things about Obama was his penchant for asking, when dealing with issues like Syria, "And then what?"
1