Post by jgaffney on Nov 11, 2010 13:05:56 GMT -5
This one doesn't really count because I haven't read the book yet. However, the review from the Washington Times is pretty good:
Commonly held misconceptions about the Tet Offensive, a series of attacks by Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnamese holiday of that name in 1968, have credited it as a pivotal victory for the communists in the Vietnam War. But was it indeed a win for the enemy?
Conventional wisdom holds that Tet was the turning point in public perception of this war, as its purposefulness to our geopolitical interests was called into question. That might well be so, but a public presumption that Tet was a triumph for the enemy is mightily challenged in "This Time We Win," a groundbreaking new book by James S. Robbins.
Mr. Robbins, editorial writer on foreign affairs at The Washington Times, painstakingly retraces the bloody clashes and their aftermath, shredding the notion that the offensive was a victory, other than Pyrrhic, for the VC and its allies, the regulars in PAVN (the People's Army of [North] Vietnam). Using the enemy's postwar documents, Mr. Robbins maintains that Tet weakened it to the point of near collapse, severely wounding the insurgents' infrastructure.
<<snip>>
Americans' lack of resolve became our Achilles' heel, Mr. Robbins concludes, for losing a war actually won, and won repeatedly, on the battlefield. The "peace movement" stoked by dour war assessments ("unwinnable," was it?) likely prolonged the conflict, a view held by Mr. Robbins and other Vietnam War scholars. Significantly, more than half of U.S. combat deaths occurred after Tet of 1968, when victory, it seemed, was at hand.
Another casualty, particularly among the military, was trust in media. Before that, a certain respect was engendered by "the press." After Vietnam reporting, mostly from the safety of Saigon hotel balconies, a distrust, even disgust, among us GIs surrounded our perception of civilian media. It continues today, a sad legacy of the Vietnam War, incited again by coverage from Iraq and now from Afghanistan. Military folks may well ask, "Whose side are they on?"
Led by the avuncular Walter Cronkite, mainstream media in the Republic of Vietnam "defined battle(s) in a way that favor[ed] the enemy, regardless of the facts," Mr. Robbins writes tellingly. One military man curtly said, "The Viet Cong can't beat us, but the New York Times and CBS-TV can." Some criticism can be laid off on media as a straw man, but not all, in this writer's opinion.
Sound familiar?
Boy, those Dems sure know how to lose a war, don't they?
Commonly held misconceptions about the Tet Offensive, a series of attacks by Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnamese holiday of that name in 1968, have credited it as a pivotal victory for the communists in the Vietnam War. But was it indeed a win for the enemy?
Conventional wisdom holds that Tet was the turning point in public perception of this war, as its purposefulness to our geopolitical interests was called into question. That might well be so, but a public presumption that Tet was a triumph for the enemy is mightily challenged in "This Time We Win," a groundbreaking new book by James S. Robbins.
Mr. Robbins, editorial writer on foreign affairs at The Washington Times, painstakingly retraces the bloody clashes and their aftermath, shredding the notion that the offensive was a victory, other than Pyrrhic, for the VC and its allies, the regulars in PAVN (the People's Army of [North] Vietnam). Using the enemy's postwar documents, Mr. Robbins maintains that Tet weakened it to the point of near collapse, severely wounding the insurgents' infrastructure.
<<snip>>
Americans' lack of resolve became our Achilles' heel, Mr. Robbins concludes, for losing a war actually won, and won repeatedly, on the battlefield. The "peace movement" stoked by dour war assessments ("unwinnable," was it?) likely prolonged the conflict, a view held by Mr. Robbins and other Vietnam War scholars. Significantly, more than half of U.S. combat deaths occurred after Tet of 1968, when victory, it seemed, was at hand.
Another casualty, particularly among the military, was trust in media. Before that, a certain respect was engendered by "the press." After Vietnam reporting, mostly from the safety of Saigon hotel balconies, a distrust, even disgust, among us GIs surrounded our perception of civilian media. It continues today, a sad legacy of the Vietnam War, incited again by coverage from Iraq and now from Afghanistan. Military folks may well ask, "Whose side are they on?"
Led by the avuncular Walter Cronkite, mainstream media in the Republic of Vietnam "defined battle(s) in a way that favor[ed] the enemy, regardless of the facts," Mr. Robbins writes tellingly. One military man curtly said, "The Viet Cong can't beat us, but the New York Times and CBS-TV can." Some criticism can be laid off on media as a straw man, but not all, in this writer's opinion.
Sound familiar?
Boy, those Dems sure know how to lose a war, don't they?