Rock and Roll Conservative

No tears

There are a lot of tributes today to the late Walter Cronkite, the iconic news anchor who reported many of America's biggest stories over the decades. None of them mention, however, that he was one of the primary reasons -- along with David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan -- why the political battle for the war in Vietnam was lost.

Cronkite's biggest contribution to the Viet Cong and the NVA was his reportage in early 1968. Near the end of January the communists launched their largest offensive to date known as the Tet Offensive. Initially it went well for them but gradually the SVA and the U.S. regained the initiative and essentially slaughtered the northern forces.

According to Cronkite, however, the offensive was a massive victory for the north, that the war was now a "stalemate." With that word from "the most trusted man in America" the public support for the war evaporated quickly. In recent years prominent NVA and VC leaders acknowledged that while they consistently lost battles against the south, they relied on winning the public relations battle in America.

And so the winnable war became a stalemate (Cronkite) and a quagmire (Halberstam) and eventually a defeat.

So let the media adore their false god. The truth is out there.

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