Robert J. Caldwell
OpEd Contributor
July 27, 2009 Late CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite may have been at one time “the most trusted man in America,” but he was hardly infallible.
When he broke his own code of objectivity to editorialize against the Vietnam War, he got it very wrong with terrible consequences.
Cronkite made a celebrity trip to South Vietnam in the immediate wake of the 1968 Tet Offensive, during which some 100 cities and towns were attacked by communist Viet Cong forces. Cronkite and much of the American press played this as a disaster for American efforts.
Cronkite returned to deliver an unprecedented on-air editorial calling the war an “unwinnable stalemate.” He urged an end to U.S. “escalation” and called for negotiations with the North Vietnamese to end the conflict. Despite its undoubted shock effect and its damaging political consequences in the United States, Tet was in fact a crushing military defeat for the communists. The Viet Cong lost 40,000 of their best troops, a shattering blow from which they never recovered.
The national uprising confidently predicted by the communists never occurred. South Vietnamese troops, which the Viet Cong hoped would collapse or defect, instead fought resolutely. The communists failed to hold a single town or city they attacked.
The strategic consequences of Tet were also far from what Cronkite supposed. Tet effectively destroyed the Viet Cong as a major military force. Thereafter, the brunt of ground fighting in South Vietnam on the communist side was borne by the North Vietnamese army, a distinctly alien force in the South Vietnamese countryside.
South Vietnam rallied after Tet. A reinvigorated Saigon government significantly expanded and improved its armed forces.
Communist atrocities, notably the systematic execution of 6,000 defenseless civilians by Viet Cong forces in Hue, helped an unprecedented civilian mobilization across South Vietnam. Four million South Vietnamese civilians (out of a total population of about 17 million) joined local self-defense militias to help defend their villages.
On the American side, new commanders in Vietnam and a new president in Washington brought better strategy – an aggressive pacification campaign, modern arms, a central role for the South Vietnamese army, and, in a bow to political necessity, a concomitant draw down of U.S. combat troops.
By 1972, Cronkite’s “unwinnable stalemate” was looking far more promising. A stronger, more stable Saigon government controlled most of the land area of South Vietnam and 90 percent of the country’s population.
The badly battered Viet Cong were largely neutralized. The North Vietnamese army’s Easter Offensive that year, an outright invasion of South Vietnam, was defeated by South Vietnamese forces backed vigorously by U.S. air power.
Here were the makings for the survival of a non-communist South Vietnam that, like South Korea, could have endured and prospered as a free nation. That it all ended instead in the fall of Saigon to North Vietnam’s invading army in 1975 was a consequence of flawed American diplomacy, Hanoi’s flagrant violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the Watergate scandal that removed Nixon, and an American Congress that shamefully pulled the plug on U.S. aid pledged to our allies in Cambodia and South Vietnam.
Cronkite was unrepentant. In a 1992 interview, he blithely suggested his stand helped shorten the war. No one, it seems, asked him about an American defeat, millions of boat people refugees, communist genocide in Cambodia, and a long night of tyranny for our abandoned allies.
Whatever Cronkite’s skills as a broadcast journalist -- and they were undeniably impressive -- his legacy is tarnished by the one time he publicly switched from facts to opinion, and got it all so wrong.
South Vietnam rallied after Tet. A reinvigorated Saigon government significantly expanded and improved its armed forces.
Communist atrocities, notably the systematic execution of 6,000 defenseless civilians by Viet Cong forces in Hue, helped an unprecedented civilian mobilization across South Vietnam. Four million South Vietnamese civilians (out of a total population of about 17 million) joined local self-defense militias to help defend their villages.
On the American side, new commanders in Vietnam and a new president in Washington brought better strategy – an aggressive pacification campaign, modern arms, a central role for the South Vietnamese army, and, in a bow to political necessity, a concomitant draw down of U.S. combat troops.
By 1972, Cronkite’s “unwinnable stalemate” was looking far more promising. A stronger, more stable Saigon government controlled most of the land area of South Vietnam and 90 percent of the country’s population.
The badly battered Viet Cong were largely neutralized. The North Vietnamese army’s Easter Offensive that year, an outright invasion of South Vietnam, was defeated by South Vietnamese forces backed vigorously by U.S. air power.
Here were the makings for the survival of a non-communist South Vietnam that, like South Korea, could have endured and prospered as a free nation. That it all ended instead in the fall of Saigon to North Vietnam’s invading army in 1975 was a consequence of flawed American diplomacy, Hanoi’s flagrant violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the Watergate scandal that removed Nixon, and an American Congress that shamefully pulled the plug on U.S. aid pledged to our allies in Cambodia and South Vietnam.
Cronkite was unrepentant. In a 1992 interview, he blithely suggested his stand helped shorten the war. No one, it seems, asked him about an American defeat, millions of boat people refugees, communist genocide in Cambodia, and a long night of tyranny for our abandoned allies.
Whatever Cronkite’s skills as a broadcast journalist -- and they were undeniably impressive -- his legacy is tarnished by the one time he publicly switched from facts to opinion, and got it all so wrong.
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