Vanity: How might Vietnam been different if Fox News had been around?

[ru4liberty]

I've been wondering about this for the past week and thought I'd tap into the fertile minds of FReepers to explore how things "might have been." Would lives have been saved? Would the war have ended earlier? Would the returning 'Nam veterans have been greeted with cheers rather than jeers? How would Jane Fonda's stunt have resonated in America given balanced reporting?

Anyone care to tackle this?

[bybybill]

Add talk radio and the net. Still, with all that and 9/11, 1/2 the sheep think we are getting our lunch in Iraq.

[KarlInOhio]

More people would be able to correctly answer the question "Who won the Tet Offensive?"

[exile]

As long as Laurie Dhue would be involved, there would have to be an improvement.

[Puppage]

This is very timely. I asked a co-worker that, given the media of olds hold on "power", how accurate are our views of recent history? I mean, the big 3 networks STILL haven't said ONE WORD about the leaked memo.

[JohnGalt]

I doubt peace loving Americans would have allowed Democrat war mongers to trick them into a war with sophomoric stunts like Tonkin Gulf or the blatant political assassination of Diem.

[johnb838]

It's a very good question. I was a child, but I can tell you how I remember "the way it was." See, there was this news anchor on CBS who would sign off every day by saying "And that's the way it is, November 11, 196X" or whatever. His name was Walter Cronkite. He is still alive and occasionally opens his pie-hole to say something anti-american.

The trouble was, people trusted him. He looked like my Grandpa. We were sort of sandbagged. People had sort of tuned out the fact that the McCarthy & HUAC had routed out real communists, and that communism was a clear and present threat to our way of life. The media was taken over and a lot of people didn't know it. Still don't today. There was no one to counter the spin.

Still, people DID know that communism was brutal and evil. There WERE people like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan shouting it from the housetops. The people elected Richard Nixon to be President twice, and that must have been quite a trick given that he had the personality of a doorknob.

But they still believed in the media enough, and in old Walter Concrete, to join with the lynch mobs in hounding poor old Tricky Dick out of office. In my home he was hated. Looking back he seems so liberal I don't know how they libs could have complained. He instituted Wage & Price controls for goodness sake. As a child I didn't understand just how communistic that was. He went to China and played ping-pong with Mao Tse-dung. OK, I'm kidding about the ping-pong, but that was one of the cultural exchange items.

Anyway, after President Nixon, who I now respect, was hounded out, we ditched Southeast Asia and millions, (MILLIONS!) were slaughtered and nobody was even really aware of it. It was a shameful hour in US history.

To get a good sense of what it was like, I suggest watching Forestt Gump. To me, that movie was not about a mildly retarded but likeable fellow having adventures, it was a metaphor for America in the Vietnam era. Forest represents the homey, country, Free Republic posting, patriotic conservative that was naieve enough to let the communists win. Jenny represents the innocent and naieve liberal who was duped into helping the communists achieve they're goals, and then dies of a lifestyle disease. They both represent large parts of the population. The sincere, honest people on the right and on the left. Not moderates exactly, but not on the fringes either.

Thank you for your question. This has gotten so long that no one will probably read it.

Freegards,

John

[jimkress]

The war would have ended much sooner - or perhaps never been taken to the degree it was pursued.

Vietnam was a useless waste of American lives. American soldiers were condemned to die in a war that the government refused to win.

That war was wrong for a host of reasons. Fox News, with its honest portrayal of the news would have immediately exposed it for the horrific debacle it was.

[joesnuffy]

I would have settled for a bunch of freepers in San Francisco kicking the crap of those spitting on us at the airport when we were coming back from Vietnam and just wanting to get home..

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Good analysis.

I will say that if one skipped the TV evening news and depended upon the weekly news magazines Time and U.S. News one got a accurate description of the events. The Tet offensive was mentioned above. Indeed that was a turning point in TV reporting and Cronkite lead the way. It was also the year, 1968, that a Republican was elected president. From then on the "anti-war" crowd owned the networks. IMO that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

There are lots of reasons we lost the war here and not in Vietnam. One was clearly the American press. It is a fact that after the war North Vietnam general Giap praised the American press as his best guerilla.

I see the same political/media quagmire today. Though this time it is not victory by our enemy that the left wants, it's the humiliation of America's unilateralism and the transfer of our sovereignty and military to international groups.

IMO it is their last chance to do it without revolution and the chicken hawk revolutionaries in their plush university, media, foundation, etc. jobs don't have to guts to take to the streets. I think that is the reason the hard left has turned up the heat to destroy another wartime administration.

BTW, we had talk radio but the liberals lined up to file FCC complaints using the "Fairness Doctrine." Station owners fearing losing their licenses pretty much shut down discussion on their stations.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

As for why Vietnam some cite Kennedy's "weak" performance with Khrushchev at Vienna, the defeat at the Bay of Pigs, and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Weak is a gross understatement. BTW, there were "wars of liberation" all over. I thought the showdown would be in Africa.

Here is from a column, "The complex passions of Miami Cubans," by Daniel Schorr

"Five months after the failed [Bay of Pigs] invasion, Kennedy met Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev in Vienna. At the end of the session he told James ('Scotty') Reston of The New York Times that Khrushchev had 'bullied him and threatened him with war over Berlin.'

"Reston said the president's thinking was as follows: Khruschev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs. He would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or if he had destroyed him. But when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba, but not bold enough to finish the job, Khruschev concluded he was dealing with an inexperienced young man who could be intimidated and blackmailed. As a result, Kennedy told Reston, he would have to increase American troop strength in Europe and confront Communism in Vietnam to disabuse Khruschev of the idea that he was a pushover."

Enter the "graduated response" philosophy of the Kennedy "best and brightest;" the emergence of the New Left; Rasputin's evil twin, LBJ; the liberals' long-time frenzy of hatred for LBJ's successor, Nixon; race and campus riots; powerful Democrat politicians such as Fulbright who believed the war was a struggle of the masses against oppression; and numerous other factors not entirely unlike today.

If you don't know who Scotty Reston was he was a journalist who could tell Washington's most powerful that they had wasted his time interviewing them if they tried to BS him.

[ru4liberty]

Bump

[Born in a Rage]

It wouldn't have mattered. Nobody had cable anyway.

[ru4liberty]

Bump

[Critter]

I'm not sure if FOX would have made too much difference back then.

Commies were running both sides of that war. The fix was in.

The goal was to prove to main stream America that resisting communism in Asia was futile. It worked. It is still working, based on what I am reading.

After Tet, the Viet Cong ceased to exist, and the NVA hightailed it into Cambodia and the north to lick their wounds. Had our war effort been headed by anyone other than communists, we would have pursued them and totally destroyed them and won the war by 69.

But nooooooooooooooo, the commies in the white house and in the media perverted the outcome of the Tet offensive in order to destroy any remaining support for the war effort in this country.

While our guys were kicking commie ass in Vietnam, we let commie infiltrators and sympathizers win the war here in the states. For that, we should hang our heads in shame.

If and when we ever grow a collective set of cajones, along with the modern traitors, there are still some surving members of the old commie fort alive and well in this country that need to be invited to a good old fashioned knot tightening party.

[viaveritasvita]

Great post.

<><

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: "After Tet, the Viet Cong ceased to exist, and the NVA hightailed it into Cambodia and the north to lick their wounds. Had our war effort been headed by anyone other than communists, we would have pursued them and totally destroyed them and won the war by 69."

Thank you for making that clear. I believe that no one was more surprised than the North Vietnamese Communists at how the American public viewed the Tet offensive aftermath. Thanks to North Vietnam's "most trusted American." Those hundreds of thousands who lost their lives and got to go to the "other side" early because of the prolonged war thank Walter, also -- or maybe not. He'll know soon enough.

Something else that I did not make clear is based upon the quote from the Schorr column. To wit, Kennedy told Reston, he would have to increase American troop strength in Europe and confront Communism in Vietnam to disabuse Khruschev of the idea that he was a pushover."

Given what we know now about Kennedy's problems could it be that the beating he received from Khruschev was made possible because Kennedy was under the influence of drugs? Kennedy knew the regular meetings had gone badly for him. He arranged to meet privately with Khruschev with only the two men and their interpreters. Reston was the first person he talked to after that private meeting.

As I recall the events of the late 50s and the very early 60s senior military personnel were pretty much unanimous, No land war in Asia.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: " After Tet, the Viet Cong ceased to exist, and the NVA hightailed it into Cambodia and the north to lick their wounds."

I am glad you mentioned Cambodia. As I recall the administration had to keep secret the fact that the enemy was being bombed as they moved troops into Cambodia and massed for attacks that would kill American and allied troops and Vietnamese civilians. When word got out there was a media frenzy condemning the bombing but I don't recall anyone explaining why it was wrong.

To this day some like Christopher Hitchens are demanding that American officials of that era be tried for war crimes because of the Cambodia bombing. Why?

You know, if we bombed enemy forces massing in a neighbor of Iraq to protect American and coalition forces, as well as, Iraqi civilians I bet the "anti-war" crowd and mainstream media would raise all kinds of hell. Why?

I'd like to see Fox cable do a docu-drama on McMaster's book, "Dereliction of Duty," and other sources that describe the events here at home. As I recall "Dereliction of Duty" covered LBJ from 1963 to 1965. The docu-drama should cover through the aftermath of the Tet offensive.

IMO we've got the same political/media quagmire now that existed then. The docu-drama could be a life saving eye opener.

[nutmeg]

FoxFan ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my FoxFan list. *Warning: This can be a high-volume ping list at times.