Not A Time To "Go Wobbly"
By Randall Nunn (11/21/03)
Recently, Robert Bartley, former editor of The Wall Street Journal, wrote an article about the comparisons being made between the Vietnam war and the Iraq war in which he made the point that the United States military effort in South Vietnam was largely successful in destroying the Viet Cong and over half of the military resources of the North Vietnamese regular army. Bartley quoted Peter Braestrup, Washington Post Saigon bureau chief during the Tet offensive in 1967 as saying "To have portrayed such a setback for one side [i.e., the Tet offensive] as a defeat for the other--in a major crisis abroad--cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism."
As Bartley said, "Tet was a military victory turned into a psychological defeat on the home front." When one pauses to reflect on the point made in the article, the implication is absolutely stunning. Over 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war we were winning and could have won but didn't, due in large part to the false portrayal of the war by the American press and some politicians.
No doubt, many today will guffaw and hoot at this conclusion because they have been educated to believe that Vietnam was a military disaster for the United States and a morally wrong effort. This "education" has come at the hands of a liberal press and academic world that was successful then in manufacturing public opinion and is successful now in enforcing adherence to the revisionist view of the history of the Vietnam war. But those of us who were around at the time remember the intense controversy over the success or lack of success by the United States in Vietnam. Bartley's article brought back those memories and confirmed the feeling of many from that time that the real tragedy of Vietnam was that lack of political will caused the fall of South Vietnam, not a military defeat. And the effect that the outcome of the Vietnam War had on American politics, American military doctrine and American confidence has been significant.
When you read the analyses of military historians and objective journalists and look at the facts, you realize that we were defeated by those among us who were sympathetic to leftist causes and easily attracted by communist propaganda and who were by nature and conditioning opposed to traditional American cultural values. A liberal press only too happy to use the leftist ideologues as a tool for furthering their political aims magnified the number and influence of this doctrinaire but committed minority. Couple this with liberal politicians and those politicians who followed the false god of public opinion rather than objective facts and principle and you had the necessary ingredients to shape public opinion to support an American withdrawal in Vietnam.
Like many topics in America today, discussion of the Vietnam War and lessons learned from it has been too long controlled by the liberal media and the academic world forcing their views on the rest of us. The liberals attempt to trivialize contrary opinions by labeling opposing viewpoints on the subject as the grumblings of right-wing militarists or unsophisticated conservatives exhibiting knee-jerk anti-Communist reactions. But, in fact, history is now looking more objectively at the Vietnam War and seeing that the media portrayal and yesterday's conventional wisdom does not match reality. Had the United States "stayed the course" in Vietnam and allowed prosecution of the tactical war to be conducted by the military, the result would have been far different.
Why does this matter today? For one thing, American confidence has suffered too long from the created perception that the U.S. lost the Vietnam War because we could not defeat a "popular uprising" and that we were morally wrong. But a correct analysis would show that we decimated the Viet Cong, destroyed over one half the North Vietnamese army and our soldiers exhibited great bravery in countless actions across South Vietnam. There was never a "popular uprising" in South Vietnam despite some attempts to portray such an occurrence. In short, the American military has no reason to feel shame and the American people ought not be gripped with a loss of confidence and confusion arising from the experience in Vietnam. A more appropriate reaction would be resentment toward those who undermined their country and its military in order to advance their political agenda. Vietnam was lost due to the successful propaganda campaign carried on at home and the lack of political courage at a time when it was needed most.
The successors to the liberal activists from the Vietnam War era are alive and well in America today. They are using similar tactics to undermine American resolve with respect to the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. They ignore or downplay the atrocities of the Hussein regime and terrorists while criticizing American efforts at every turn and repeating the mantra of "quagmire" as they tabulate the number of American soldiers killed since the end of major hostilities. The endless repetition of this politically-motivated rhetoric is having some effect but not nearly what it had during the Vietnam War era. Talk radio, the Internet and more balance from FOX News is blunting the leftist propaganda and giving support to those who dare to oppose the liberal view of the world. This time around the liberal media, Hollywood and the academic world are likely to succeed only in furthering the cultural divisions in this country and solidifying sentiment into two divergent camps.
The election in 2004 will both serve as an indication of how successful liberal media spin has been and as a mandate for politicians on the winning side. Right now, it appears that the liberals are headed for disaster and their ideas for the outer fringe of the left side of the political spectrum. Success in Iraq and in the war on terrorism will not only bring some measure of stability and more democratic conditions in the middle east, but it will also boost the confidence of Americans at a pivotal point in American history. This is not a time for conservatives or conservative politicians to "go wobbly."
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