Disinformatsya: How Liberal Media Attempts To Demoralize...

[Chiron]

There is a disputed quote, attributed to North Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, which states the American military would have won the Vietnam War were it not for the efforts of the American media to demoralize the nation. Giap purportedly wrote, "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. ... We were ready to surrender! ... We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields."

While this quote is disputed, it is quite plausible. During the Vietnam War the liberal media anxiously reported sensationalized - and false - stories of atrocities by American troops.

Unfortunately, they got away with it then. This time it is different. This time the new media stopped them.


Full story

[EvilCouch]

I find it pretty unlikely that the quote ever happened. Especially since older references to it talk about Tet, which occurred 7 years before the war actually ended. It seems pretty improbable that if an enemy is on the verge of surrender and keeps getting killed at a ridiculous ratio (somewhere around 10 VC for every 1 GI) for another 7 years that they don't give surrender another thought.

That said, the article does make a lot of good points. The media has been running a lot of dirty stories without bothering to even make an attempt to verify the facts.

[EvilCouch]

Here's the original article in its entirety.
http://journals.aol.com/tschuckman/OldS ... knew./1977

I find it quite plausible. Giap was talking about two separate events, and his comments about Tet were reported elsewhere to the effect that in the aftermath of Tet, after reviewing the fact that his grand strategy had failed so abysmally, he had advised Le Duc Tho that the only prudent course of action was some sort of negotiation. Then news came to them that Walter Cronkite had announced on US television that the war was unwinnable.
It is also interesting to note that the NVA strategy changed at this specific point in time, moving more towards a holding action that kept up pressure but risked fewer assets.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/giap.asp
I no longer find it just implausible, but just short of impossible. (I trust nearly nothing to be infallible, not even Snopes)

However, Snopes' research does turn up this tidbit:

It's possible that the apparently apocryphal General Giap statement is based upon a misattribution of somewhat similar sentiments expressed by other
political or military figures involved in the Vietnam War. For example, in 1995 the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Bui Tin, a former colonel who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, that included the following exchange:

Q: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
A: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly

Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.

[Chiron]

It has been said that the pen is more powerful than the sword....

It is clear that media in any form has the power and means to change events to suit the agenda it wishes.

This is proven in history time and time again. Even Adolf Hitler gained momentum using the press, flyers and rallies.

It’s not only possible it has been proven fact throughout history that disinformation may be the most powerful weapon used today.

[EvilCouch]

But the thought that the NVA might have considered negotiations in the aftermath of Tet 68 is not an unreasonable one. Their strategy had failed utterly.

The NVA were expecting a wholesale uprising from the South Vietnamese people, something they could have taken for granted in 1958, just a few years prior. They were also not prepared for the resistance of the ARVN, many of whom they expected to switch sides when they occasion arose.
Neither of these things happened; just the reverse.
Giap had slowly and patiently committed his best forces to the Offensive, and they were slaughtered without obtaining one tactical victory. Worse, by committing mass atrocities in places like Hue, they polarized large numbers of fence sitters away from them. To add insult to injury Giap's 2nd Dien Bin Phu, the siege of Khe Sanh, was also a defeat. Unlike the Legionnaires, the US Marines held out and the siege was broken.

Under those circumstances it is not such a far fetched idea that Giap, or even Tho, would have at least considered the possibility of a settlement, if for no other reason than to give them time to retrench.

Oh, I don't doubt that there's a possibility that they considered it. Tet's before my time, so I couldn't begin to know how it felt on the ground, but the numbers I've read make it out to be a broomhandle raping delivered to the NVA. I just don't think he ever entertained the idea strongly enough to publicly admit it.

[Jim]

Prior to the Tet 68 Offensive, we regularly ran into Viet Cong (South Vietnamese Insurgents); following Tet, we only fought NVA regular Army units. The uprise happened and the VC infrastructure was destroyed as fighting units. By 1969, on the other hand, we could drive from Can Tho to Saigon without a convoy or armed guards. At that point, 1970, we should have declaired victory and gone home.