Lt. General Donald E. Rosenblum at work….
Last week, at the height of the Cronkite memorabilia-fest, I watched, along with everyone else, as TV news ran the famous ‘we can no longer win the war in Vietnam’ clip over and over.
Many declared it the turning point in the War in Vietnam.
What was astonishing, upon examination, was that Cronkite made that pronouncement after a 2-week tour of Vietnam.
Two weeks is, admittedly, a long time for a television reporter. Most of the 60-Minutes talent or the folks from Today generally fly in for a few stand-ups and depart. They might commit to a day at the most.
Never-the-less, one must wonder just how much Cronkite could possibly have learnt or absorbed in only two weeks.
Were he just another reporter, that ‘Cook’s Tour’ of Vietnam might be forgiven. But Cronkite brought to his pronouncements an almost incomprehensible amount of power. When CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite was at its height, it sometimes garnered an audience of half the United States.
And when ‘the most trusted man in America’ speaks to half the nation, people listen.
It made me start to thing about the juxtaposition of the power of the media, particularly when it is populated by people who generally know next to nothing about what they are talking about.
More than 20 years ago, Neil Postman warned that one of the great dangers of television news was that it conveyed what he called ‘the illusion of knowledge’. The superficiality that television almost mandates, married to a superficial understanding of complex issues can be dangerous. Was it so with Uncle Walter in Vietnam?
To find another opinion on this, I called my Uncle, Lt. General Donald E. Rosenblum.
(That’s 3 stars for those of us who live in NY or LA.)
A graduate of The Citadel, a lifelong professional soldier, and at his last job, the commander of all US Army forces east of the Mississippi, Uncle Don has a deep understanding of what happened in Vietnam. After all, he was there; and for more than two weeks. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam, in the field.
These days, he’s a retired 3-star General living in Savannah, Georgia with his lovely and charming wife Nancy, but his office is chok-a-block with photos, awards, commendations, pictures with Presidents and other mementos of a lifetime of service to the country.
As he was in Vietnam during and after Tet, and while Cronkite did his famous “I have seen the light” moment, I asked what he though of the whole thing.
Here’s what he said:
Cronkite was absolutely incorrect about his assessment of the war. However, that being said, I remember the media coverage about Tet. We & the South Vietnamese had been beaten & they showed the VC & N. Vietnamese in Saigon by the US Embassy & the S. Vietnamese Headquarters. The facts, in my view are as follows. The enemy had organized a well coordinated attack throughout S. Vietnam. They surprised us, however they lost thousands of soldiers & did not take any cities or towns of tactical importance. As a matter of fact, after the US left & the N. Vietnam Army (NVA) took over the country the senior military NVA general admitted that the Tet offensive was a complete disaster for them. Did the NVA & VC win the PR battle of Tet? Most certainly did & it was led by Uncle Walter. The media had given us little positive & Tet was their big thing for the war being lost.
When we finally left in ’75 every provincial capital was in S. Vietnamese hands & the casualty rate for the NVA & VC was horrendous. After the US troops left the Congress cut the appropriations for the S. Vietnamese by 50%. That meant their ammunition requests , money for spare parts, etc was lacking & the NVA overran the country.
You must also remember that on my 1st tour I was a Lt Col & was interested in my unit. I was a Battalion Commander in a Separate Parachute Brigade. Our unit killed a hell of a lot of bad guys & suffered minimal friendly casualties. My 2d tour I was promoted to Colonel & for part of the time was at Khe Sanh helping the S. Vietnamese as they went into Laos.
Was the war winnable? I think so. First we were not allowed to pursue the NVA into Laos or fire into Laos, so the NVA had a safe haven. Second our bombing of N. Vietnam was haphazard & Lyndon Johnson & SEC DEF Robert Strange (& he was) McNamara commanded when & who to bomb.
Lastly, Uncle Walter knew as much about the strategic & tactical aspects of the war as I know about running a TV station. Frankly after his comments I detested Walter Cronkite.
The issue here, I think transcends Vietnam.
It is one of the power of the Media.
The Constitution created an extremely vibrant form of government, and one that still functions well after more than 200 years because it created countervailing forces – a balance of power. No one branch of government can rule unchecked.
When the Founders drafted the Constitution, newspapers were in their infancy. Benjamin Franklin was printing one of the very first papers in the country in Philadelphia. But papers were small, circulation limited.
And while the Constitution clearly protects the right to a free press in the First Amendment, it is equally clear that the Founders never envisioned the kind of power that the Media has today. A power that has no countervailing force to make sure that it also stays in balance.
This is not a liberal vs. conservative argument.
My Uncle is clearly a conservative. He closes his email to me with a quote from Pat Buchannan! But the issue of an unchecked press transcends liberal or conservative points of view. The same damage that Cronkite and the press did to the US in Vietnam, I think, they repeated with their ‘coverage’ (and I use the word lightly) of events leading to the US invasion of Iraq. As a former PhD candidate in Islamic Studies, I can tell you that that was a tsunami of inaccuracy, misinformation and sloppy reporting.
The average American watches 4.5 hours of TV a day. 85% of the population still says that television news is their primary source of information.
The combination of so much unchecked power married to too often shallow and superficial information is recipe for disaster.
There are two solutions: either we learn to pay far less attention to what we see on TV news, or we create some kind of countervailing sources of information. I, for one, am a fan of the latter, believing that the former is simply unattainable.
7 Comments
Edward Machain April 07, 2014
Dear Rosenblum,
I am a history major at CSU Fresno and have been studying the Vietnam conflict for about a year and a half now. It sounds like you are stating a revisionist perspective of the war; blaming the media and especially, Cronkite’s “stalemate” moment for the loss in the Vietnamese theater. Your uncle believes that they could’ve won the war, and thus, blames the media for creating political pressures on the government. I do not believe this is an accurate assessment of the war, especially with all of the academic scholarship out to refute that revisionist theory. Although the NLF and VC suffered defeats during Tet, our forces were not able to win the war of attrition. The VC matched it since 1965. They were able to regain the countryside because ARVN forces left them to defend the cities. Stalemate was the correct assessment, but Cronkite just mirrored that theory which was first said in 1967, 5-6 months prior to Tet. Johnson didn’t call the “Cronkite Moment” a turning point like Halberstam falsely stated and the media didn’t push him out of office. Read Johnson’s “The Vantage Point,” chapter 18, he thought about leaving office since he became president. The power of the media is a false claim and has been a scapegoat for our failed policies in Vietnam. In speculation, even if we had 1 million troops on the ground, we could not have defeated “the will” of the North Vietnamese. Thank you.
Michael Rosenblum April 14, 2014
Dear Ed
There is nothing better than being a college student. The world seems so simple to understand. Particularly history.
I was also a history major at Williams, (a long time ago) and then got an MA in Islamic History. To this day it is my passion.
I am returning to Oxford this summer to keep studying history – I have done this a few times. This is what you get to do when you are old.
As for Vietnam, one may argue the merits of American involvement at all, but if you decide to become embroiled in a war, you better set out to win it,
which the US never really did. (They were afraid of the Chinese and Soviets, which is in itself arguable).
The US held back on running a full scale war and maintained a limited kind of ‘police action’ which resulted simply in dragging on a slow bleed for years.
Could the US have ‘won’ a war with Vietnam with a full blown will to win? I am sure they could have. You talk about defeating the ‘will’ of the North Vietnamese people. This is nothing compared to defeating the ‘will’ of Nazi Germany which was a LOT more powerful militarily, economically, industrially and will-power wise. Had the Americans invaded the North physically and taken Hanoi and Haiphong (which they could have done in an afternoon), the war would have been over soon, and probably the people of Vietnam would have, in the long run, fared better than they did under a communist regime (see South Korea v. North Korea).
Of course, in the long run capitalism triumphed instead – money always wins out. (See China).
I have been to Vietnam several times as a journalist (as well as Cambodia and Laos). I am not sure anyone really thrived under the Pathet Lao, the KR or the People’s Republic. But that’s life.
David Fay June 11, 2010
Hello,
I am a retired naval officer (1965 -1995). During one of my assignments, I was on the Commander, Patrol Wings Atlantic staff. Our Public Affairs Officer showed the staff a video about the media misinformation (CBS News) concerning the battle for Khe Sanh. It was narrated by Charleton Heston. I am currently a Professor of Joint Maritime Operations for the Naval War College, College of Distance Education in Jacksonville, FL. Over the years, I have mentioned this video to my seminars, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the title. Is there any chance that you might be familiar with this video?
Sincerely,
Dave
Michael Rosenblum June 11, 2010
Hi Dave
Sorry, I can’t seem to find it.
Sounds interesting thought.
best
m
prw July 24, 2009
The media didn’t lose the war in Vietnam because the U.S. didn’t lose the war.
The major U.S. strategic objective in Vietnam was to prevent the expansion of Soviet and Chinese Communist influence in South East Asia. Looking at the world balance of power now and conditions in Russia and China it’s hard to say that goal was not obtained — even though the tactical goal of maintaining the South Vietnamese government was lost (something I am not convinced anyone in the U.S. ever really cared about all that much). Now people are worried about the rise of China as a capitalist power.
The war was ended when Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon decided it was getting in the way of their own grand strategic designs. Walter Conkrite didn’t have too much to do with it. To think that he did, well, that’s just part of the illusion of knowledge.
— former PhD candidate in international relations.
Michael Rosenblum July 23, 2009
I didn’t know Cronkite, but I knew a lot of other television reporters. Not exactly the best and the brightest.
Peter Jennings, 10th grade dropout.
Dan Rather graduated from Sam Houston Teacher’s College.
Yeah…
and they were the smarter ones.
Not exactly an impressive lot.
I am sure Walter was a great ‘journalist’, whatever that means.. but an intellectual? hardly.
$ July 23, 2009
Cronkite did not base his entire opinion on those lone two weeks in Vietnam.
To assume that, then publish an entire post based on this narrow assumption, is silly and misleading.
But then again, that’s never stopped you before.
Tell us more about the width of two horses and how that determined the history of the railroad!
LOL!