WI Cronkite didn't declare war as 'lost'?

Deleted member 1487

Ah again a thread trying to uphold the American Dolchstoss legend...

That is probably the most apt description of american intrasigence about that war. It seems we can't let something like this go...
 
This is like saying that Stalingrad was a defeat for the USSR because the city was destroyed.

At Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army was gutted and captured.

During Tet, the Viet Cong were gutted.

It was a political victory for them because of all the rosy pronouncements before, but that does not mean it was inevitably a political victory.
 
What if Walter Cronkite were a bit more restrained and tactful in his editorial did not declare the Vietnam war as altogether lost?

Why would the most trustworthy and honest newsman in the country lie? Unlike his peers, he didn't have much of a track record of fibbing.
 
What grounds did Cronkite have to declare the war lost?

Okay, so all the pronouncements about "the light at the end of the tunnel" may not have been accurate. That does not make the fall of South Vietnam inevitable.
 

Hendryk

Banned
At Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army was gutted and captured.

During Tet, the Viet Cong were gutted.
Stalingrad broke the myth of Wehrmacht invincibility, little did it matter that it was achieved at the cost of a destroyed city and huge Soviet losses. Same with Tet: the VC were considered expendable by the North Vietnamese leadership, and expended they were in order to break the myth of American invincibility.

Playing Godwin games won't win you the argument.
Susano is in fact quite right. There are perfectly valid and relevant similarities between the original Dolchstoss legend, and its more recent incarnation in post-Vietnam America.
 
Even deprived of supplies and support while the Soviets poured equipment into North Vietnam and even with treachery by Nixon and Kissinger Saigon lasted until 1975. Without such deprivation there would be two Vietnams to this day as once Beijing and Hanoi broke Saigon would have had much more security.

This also means that Nixon's great stroke of playing Beijing and Moscow against one another never happens so the effect on the Cold War may not be what most Americans would desire, not to mention post-Cold War trade relations with Beijing.

In a cruel strategic sense the US WON the Vietnam War, as the fall of South Vietnam crippled Soviet-Chinese relations while driving ASEAN into alliance with the US, if you have no problem with allowing wholesale slaughter for strategic purposes. Which Nixon and Kissinger never did as they certainly knew how Hanoi and especially Pol Pot would act in victory.


Cronkite did not hold high position in the Nixon administration nor did he play a key role in Congress choosing to cut off an ally. Although I could be wrong about this.;)



Hendryk, except the myth of the German Army unbeaten in the field was exactly that while, as you correctly state, the Viet Cong was broken by the Tet offensive so a military debacle became a political victory. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, the US wasn't fighting the Viet Cong after Tet but the NVA.
 
What grounds did Cronkite have to declare the war lost?

Okay, so all the pronouncements about "the light at the end of the tunnel" may not have been accurate. That does not make the fall of South Vietnam inevitable.

Ignoring the fact that you seem to be buying into the ridiculous notion that the host of the CBS Evening News created the CW about Tet (as opposed to merely repeating it), why do you think one independent commentator voicing his own beliefs about the war is in any way equivalent to the massive errors in analysis/policy of MACV and the Johnson administation?

Oh, and is this an actual 'declaration' of defeat?

MP, you're not one of these hit-and-run people who just put up a link to someone else's argument (unlike the above poster I got stuck into). Tell us why you think Cronkite was a defeatist, and not just a realist repeating what many in America had already decided at that point--that the 'cost benefits' of continuing to engage the communists in South Vietnam were not in the United States' favour, and that invading North Vietnam could trigger MAD.
 
Magniac, yes! Instead of complaining about one journalist's one statement, only after large scale and deliberate dishonesty by LBJ and the Pentagon, ask people upset about Cronkite what they think of the real and actual decisions by Nixon to sell out an ally.
 
Magniac, yes! Instead of complaining about one journalist's one statement, only after large scale and deliberate dishonesty by LBJ and the Pentagon, ask people upset about Cronkite what they think of the real and actual decisions by Nixon to sell out an ally.

But you're asking the hawks to take a line over Vietnam similar to what the NR types thought about Tricky Dick recognising Mao's regime. I think they've long since compartmentalised those attitudes.

It's a case of a 'we catch and kill our own--Nixon might have selled out Taiwan, but we can fantasise about him not selling out Saigon, because we catch and kill our own on the Right'. Political movements are good at ignoring difficult policy questions like this.
 
Why would the most trustworthy and honest newsman in the country lie? Unlike his peers, he didn't have much of a track record of fibbing.
Uh, I never accused him of lying, he was simply giving his humble and potentially fallible opinion. I'm sure even you would know that not really knowing what you're talking about and lying are two different things.
 
Oh, and is this an actual 'declaration' of defeat?

MP, you're not one of these hit-and-run people who just put up a link to someone else's argument (unlike the above poster I got stuck into). Tell us why you think Cronkite was a defeatist, and not just a realist repeating what many in America had already decided at that point--that the 'cost benefits' of continuing to engage the communists in South Vietnam were not in the United States' favour, and that invading North Vietnam could trigger MAD.

That's it? I was under the impression what he said was a lot more blatant.

A lot of Vietnam vets disliked Cronkite and that seems awfully tame to provoke such disdain.
 

Bearcat

Banned
That's it? I was under the impression what he said was a lot more blatant.

A lot of Vietnam vets disliked Cronkite and that seems awfully tame to provoke such disdain.

They had a lot of rage that needed a focus. Its a lot easier for some to claim the "MSM" stabbed us in the back, than to admit that 'we were wasted in a pointless, poorly thought out, strategically irrelevant sideshow to the Cold War'.
 
They had a lot of rage that needed a focus. Its a lot easier for some to claim the "MSM" stabbed us in the back, than to admit that 'we were wasted in a pointless, poorly thought out, strategically irrelevant sideshow to the Cold War'.

Are you sure he didn't say any more?

One veteran wrote a letter to my paper--a letter that actually praised Cronkite more than it attacked him because of his appearance at the military college at Leavenworth--that said Cronkite and CBS reported only bad news from Vietnam.
 
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