Posted on 02/26/2018 2:25:40 PM PST by Nextrush
".....To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest that we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic if unsatifactory conclusion.
On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people, who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
This is Walter Cronkite, Good Night."
Walter Cronkite Commentary-CBS News Special "Report from Vietnam"-2/27/1968
"I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam....."
President Richard M. Nixon Speech 1/23/1973
Fifty years ago today the three major networks of the time (CBS, NBC, ABC) were the cutting edge media viewed by millions and having dominance of the audience and virtually no competition in their medium.
They focused on entertainment but their news programs were the leading ones, viewed by millions and influencing public opinion.
I tuned in the CBS News program that night to see the war, which was fascinating me as a seven year old child.
The commentary was a bit over my head viewing on the monocrhome set in the bedroom. I went into the living room where my father watched it on the color television set.
He was all sold on the notion of getting out of Vietnam.
My anti-Communism was yet to be awakened and my understanding of the policies of the Uniparty politicians who policed the world as envisioned by the Democrat Progressive Woodrow Wilson was not there yet.
The Vietnam War was the new Korean War to begin with, a war to police and get the Communists to a negotiating table from the beginning. No victory like World War II was intended from its inception with deadly consequences for thousands.
Back to Cronkite's commentary. Many see it as left-wing propaganda, pro-Communist.
The liberal news stars of CBS News from this era like Dan Rather and Roger Mudd always decried their "conservative" management when confronted about their biases.
But what were the political views of CBS management. One interesting insight into that comes from the fact that Prescott Bush, Republican from Connecticut, who was the father and grandfather of future RINO Presidents of the United States served on the board of CBS around 1950.
In his biography of Walter Cronkite published in 2012, historian Douglas Brinkley noted that the CBS management as in Chairman William Paley was "Rockefeller Republican". Brinkley also outed Cronkite's liberalism as well in his extensive work.
The commentary on the war produced 50 years ago would be a joint venture between Cronkite and his "CBS Evening News" Executive Producer Ernest Leiser with the sanction of CBS News President Richard Salant as a sort of "Executive Editor" of the whole enterprise.
Salant was a right hand man of CBS boss William Paley brought in to replace Fred Friendly, the onetime Edward R. Murrow associate ("See It Now" etc.) who wanted coverage of anti-war Senate hearings on Vietnam to be aired instead of regular programming on CBS.
While Cronkite's commentary would be in line with liberal anti-war interests like those of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy within the Democrat Party who opposed President Johnson it would also be in the interests of the Republican Party to defeat the Democrats in the fall election.
And the notions of Cronkite of an "honorable people" who would "negotiate" would be translated by the victor of the 1968 election, Richard Nixon, into the notion of "peace with honor" as Nixon put it.
Of course the media would pounce on Nixon and there would be a war between the two, but that's another story.
One could argue that CBS management got their way in this arrangement as well with the election of a "moderate Republican, Rockefeller Republican" in the end in 1968.
Video links are below......
Was he a reporter in WW2?
Cronkite was. He worked for United Press and was given credit for “exclusives” like during the Battle of the Bulge when Cronkite was first to report that Germans in American uniforms were operating behind the front lines.
But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people, who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
Ah, Walter. Did YOU do the best you could to defend
democracy? I think not. It just wasn’t worth the effort
in your view.
I can hear Tom Moorer growling:
“Seems like they turned all our victories into defeats.”
We were outsmarted and outmaneuvered on the college campuses. See Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber: The American Challenge.
On Walter Cronkites 1968 “revelation” that we had to “get out of Vietnam,” from a speech given in October 2000 by General Fredrick Weyand;
“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. We had done a good job there. 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’.”
“It didn’t seem to matter that those thousands of bodies were of South Vietnamese citizens who had been killed by the Hanoi soldiers and Walter wasn’t alone in this because I think many in the media mirrored his view…”
“When I was in Paris at the Peace Talks, it was the most frustrating assignment I think I ever had. Sitting in that conference, week after week listening to the Hanoi negotiators, Le Duc Tho and his friends lecture us. Reading from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Herald Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution, NBC, CBS, you name it. Their message was always the same. ‘Hey, read your newspapers, listen to your TV. The American people want you out of Vietnam. Now, why don’t you just go ahead and get out’?”
Full speech transcript: http://www.i-served.com/weyandspeech.htm
Honorable people don't allow a genicide of 2 million people by Pol Pot and the Khmir Rogue. Unkie Walter didn't bother to report on that!
When I was over there I wasn`t political,just
saw photogs as we called them with their 4 or 5
Nikons taking pics of us and thought we were the good guys.
Only after I got back realized how we were portrayed.
My blood pressure probaly went up from that post of yours.
Returning from Nam on emergency leave I was spit on by Hippie Bastards in S.F airport and damn near arrested for attempting retaliation. All inspired by America’s most trusted journalist, “Uncle Walter”. I’d piss on his grave, given the opportunity.Our hands were tied to comply with political opportunist,—victory was impossible.
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