| February 27 |  |
Editor says, what if the Johnson administration had kept middle america onboard at the outset of the 1968 campaign? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the July 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1968, on this day anchorman Walter Cronkite closed "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" with an upbeat editorial report concluding that the American military had achieved a remarkable feat of arms in defeating the Tet Offensive.
Report from VietnamA veteran of second world war news correspondence which bordered on propaganda, Cronkite instinctively believed that "smart" journalists needed to support the American military. However that belief had been shattered during his recent visit to Vietnam. Chaperoned on a velvet-trimmed tour by the top brass in Da Nang, he had been button-holled by a new generation of journalists such as William Safer who had drawn his attention to some alarming falsehoods that he was able to verify first hand.
However, events were to outpace Cronkite's growing cynicism. The chief source of the falsehoods, William Westmoreland, was recalled after making a MacArthur-style insane request for two hundred thousand more ground troops to expand the war into neighboroughing countries. His replacement, General Abrhams promised a move towards supporting the Southern Vietnamese rather than fighting the war on their behalf, and Cronkie decided that on balanace he was prepared to give President Johnson the benefit of the doubt. And despite the discordant reports from other media channels, middle America was reluctantly willing to accept the viewpoint of their most trusted news icon.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Walter Cronkite, Vietnam, Westmoreland, Abrams, Vietnamese. Editor says, in authoring this article we have benefited from advice and guidance from Jackie Rose and Scott Palter.
~ Westy's near insane request for 206K more men plus an expansion of the war to all the neighboring countries clinched the narrative of Tet as a US defeat instead of the victory it was.
~ Actually, matters were more complicaated than that. Technically, yes, Tet was a U.S. victory. However, what made it appear a defeat was that according to received military opinion at the time, the NVA was on the brink of collapse and shouldn't have been able to launch such a massive offensive in the first place. That raised doubts about the overall effectiveness of the U.S. military strategy (for all practical purposes, Saigon didn't have one, except to fight to the last American). That was what prompted Westmoreland's "near-insane demand": the General hoped to simply drown the enemy in troops and weapons.
And whatever General Creighton Abrams might have promised, no amount of "support" would have guaranteed the victory of an ARVN too corrupt and inept to fight on its own and a Saigon regime with dwindling piopular support. The only paths to U.S. victory would have involved overwhelming force, probably eventually including the use of nuclear weapons. That would have killed millions and been a huge political disaster, both at home and internationally.
~ Easier solution, Westmoreland is removed or dies in late 1967and Abrahms takes over earlier solving the spin and lie problem and restoring trust amongst the reporter pool well before Tet. Westmoreland did more to lose the war than any other person but he wasn't alone in his beliefs, the key would have been getting someone more flexible in charge who could adapt to the tactics of the enemy instead of always looking for a bigger stick to hit them with.
~ Would this have delayed or derailed the nascent antiwar movement in the US?
~ 1. Issue is not the anti-war movement [ a mix of open red diaper babies and pacifist/isolationists] but rather limiting its political spread. The correct response to Tet was to announce a victory, reduce draft calls and bring home a US brigade. Show that the war is wi8nding down.
2. Saigon beat PAVN straight up in 1972. US was down to a brigade of ground troops of which one company engaged briefly. What Saigon needed was $, arms and 20-30K specialists/air support. What defeated the ARVN 1974-1975 was an army group sized offensive [36-40 divisions] with tanks, field guns and at the end air support. In reverse the ARVN was rationing fuel and ammo because of US aid cutbacks. The two secret weapons Hanoi had were the US media and the liberal majority in the US Senate. Thank you Ted Kennedy. I am reminded every April 30th of what American liberalism really means.
~ Which was true. The communists suffered horrific losses. The Viet Cong never recovered. The liberal left didn't get it.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
