we lost the viet nam war ... poor military strategy and execution
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Originally Posted by Fear-And-Loathing
I've been studying this quite alot recently and I have come to the conclusion that the Vietnam war signified the beginning of another 'power' bloc within the US that is, one that equals if not surpasses the power of government. I would argue that the new 'Pillar' which arose from Vietnam and continues to dominate American life is of course, the Media.
During the Vietnam war, because many news companies did not approve and wanted to gain ratings they LIED about what was actually happening. This painted a very gloomy picture of what was happening on the ground which turned public opinion against the war and forced our withdrawal. However, when looking at the evidence in key battles such as Khe Sanh, Hue and many others the Media deliberately lied about what was happening and missed out news which would've increased support for the war, such as the massacres at Hue and the resounding failure on the Viet Congs part during the Tet offensive.
This hangover from Vietnam, that is the Media's control over the American population is incredible. The power of the Media is so strong now that our leaders have to lie to us about the real reasons for going to war. This is the legacy of Vietnam.
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sorry, but your conclusion is dated; check this out and consider that rather than having a free press it was recognized that control of the media was essential to plot a right wing course for our country:
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Because U.S. politicians and commanders had oversold progress in the war as a way to quiet domestic dissent, the savage Tet fighting shocked millions of Americans and widened Washington’s “credibility gap” on Vietnam.
Within weeks, President Lyndon Johnson would bow out of his race for re-election. Tet was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War.
But Tet had another long-term consequence. In the years that followed, U.S. conservatives would insist bitterly that critical news reporting about the war in general but particularly the Tet Offensive caused the American defeat, that the U.S. news media had betrayed the nation, that reporters had gone from being the Fourth Estate to acting like an enemy fifth column.
Official Army historians would conclude eventually that the war was lost by poor strategy and excessive casualties, not by disloyal reporters.
“It is undeniable,” wrote Army historian William M. Hammond in 1988, “that press reports were … more accurate than the public statements of the administration in portraying the situation in Vietnam.” [Hammond’s The Military and the Media, 1962-1968, published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History.]
But by then, the “press-lost-Vietnam” charge had become an article of faith to many conservatives. That certainty fueled the vitriol of rightist anti-press groups and led deep-pocket conservatives to pour billions of dollars into the construction of an ideologically right-wing media, now one of the most potent political forces in the nation.
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[emphasis added here]
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/012908a.html
for confirmation of this assessment read an insider's account; "Decent Interval" by Frank Snepp, Jr., a CIA operative. Snepp, the son of a conservative federal judge, was denied royalties for the book by the supreme court because the CIA refused to allow him to publish it
Bill Moyers (after leaving public television's NOW)
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...
Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence. ...
Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the Newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry. In Orwell’s 1984 the character Syme, one of the writers of that totalitarian society’s dictionary, explains to the protagonist, Winston, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050 at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we’re having right now. The whole climate of thought,” he said, “will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.
...
And the problem was that we were telling stories that partisans in power didn’t want told, and we were getting it right, not rightwing. Let me tell you something—and we can argue about this at some other time—I’ve always thought the American eagle needed a left wing and a right wing. The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. And both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it’s no longer an eagle, and it’s going to crash.
... I closed the broadcast one Friday night by putting a flag in my lapel and said—well, here’s exactly what I said. Here’s a copy of what I said: "I wore my flag tonight, first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans. Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustain me, whose armed forces protected me and whose ideals inspired me. I offered my heart’s affection in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood. So does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15th. So what’s this doing here? I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo, the trademark—the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On most Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official labels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book of orthodoxy on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.
"But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapel while writing books and running web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks, even as they call for spending more on war.
“So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks. or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government, and it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war, except in self defense, is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”
... It turned out there was a blacklist of people who had been removed from the list of prominent Americans sent abroad to lecture on behalf of America and the USIA. What’s more, it was discovered that evidence as to how those people were chosen to be on the blacklist, more than seven hundred documents, had been shredded. Among those on the blacklist of journalists, writers, scholars and politicians were dangerous left wing subversives like Walter Cronkite, James Baldwin, Gary Hart, Ralph Nader, Ben Bradley, Coretta Scott King and David Brinkley.
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[emphasis added]
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/5/1...cpbs_tomlinson
http://www.freepress.net/news/8120
__________________
“Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth.”
[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97] "God Bless John mKKKain, and John Bless America." - Fred Thompson
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Originally Posted by Spare
Well, that settles it ... who cares about facts?
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