Post by jgaffney on Sept 21, 2011 15:45:39 GMT -5
I'm finishing up a book by Lewis Sorley, A Better War. It's a history of American military actions in Vietnam from 1968 to the end in 1973. According to the book, America had essentially won the war by December 1972. However, due to the political expediency of the Paris Peace Accords, we pulled our forces out of South Vietnam without requiring that North Vietnam do the same. The rest is history.
I ran across something, though, that shows the ingrained nature of the mainstream media and its distaste for anything that shows the superiority of America. This is from a press conference in 1982 with President Ronald Reagan. The President fields a question from Leslie Stahl, then the White House reporter with CBS News:
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry, but I'd like to go back to Latin America and El Salvador for a minute.
In the 1960's the CIA came up with a secret plan to get us involved in Vietnam in a surreptitious, covert manner. Is it possible that you can tell us that there is no secret plan now devised by the CIA or any other agency in government to surreptitiously involve Americans in similar activities in Latin America? And can you also assure the American people that we will not go in there secretly without you and this Government giving us some pre-warning?
The President. Well, Lesley, you know there's a law by which things of this kind have to be cleared with congressional committees before anything is done.
But again, if I may point to something-I'm not in total agreement with the premise about Vietnam. If I recall correctly, when France gave up Indochina as a colony, the leading nations of the world met in Geneva with regard to helping those colonies become independent nations. And since North and South Vietnam had been, previous to colonization, two separate countries, provisions were made that these two countries could, by a vote of all their people together, decide whether they wanted to be one country or not.
And there wasn't anything surreptitious about it, that when Ho Chi Minh refused to participate in such an election—and there was provision that people of both countries could cross the border and live in the other country if they wanted to. And when they began leaving by the thousands and thousands from North Vietnam to live in South Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh closed the border and again violated that part of the agreement.
And openly, our country sent military advisers there to help a country which had been a colony have such things as a national security force, an army, you might say, or a military to defend itself. And they were doing this, if I recall correctly, also in civilian clothes, no weapons, until they began being blown up where they lived and walking down the street by people riding by on bicycles and throwing pipe-bombs at them. And then they were permitted to carry side arms or wear uniforms.
But it was totally a program until John F. Kennedy—when these attacks and forays became so great that John F. Kennedy authorized the sending in of a division of Marines. And that was the first move toward combat troops in Vietnam.
So, I don't think there's any parallel there between covert activities or anything
So, Ms. Stahl begins with the mistaken premise that the War in Vietnam began "in a surreptitious, covert manner." President Reagan then proceeds to give Ms. Stahl a lesson in history, something her education at Wheaton College conveniently omitted.
I guess it's not really the liberals' fault. They just know so many things that are wrong.
I ran across something, though, that shows the ingrained nature of the mainstream media and its distaste for anything that shows the superiority of America. This is from a press conference in 1982 with President Ronald Reagan. The President fields a question from Leslie Stahl, then the White House reporter with CBS News:
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry, but I'd like to go back to Latin America and El Salvador for a minute.
In the 1960's the CIA came up with a secret plan to get us involved in Vietnam in a surreptitious, covert manner. Is it possible that you can tell us that there is no secret plan now devised by the CIA or any other agency in government to surreptitiously involve Americans in similar activities in Latin America? And can you also assure the American people that we will not go in there secretly without you and this Government giving us some pre-warning?
The President. Well, Lesley, you know there's a law by which things of this kind have to be cleared with congressional committees before anything is done.
But again, if I may point to something-I'm not in total agreement with the premise about Vietnam. If I recall correctly, when France gave up Indochina as a colony, the leading nations of the world met in Geneva with regard to helping those colonies become independent nations. And since North and South Vietnam had been, previous to colonization, two separate countries, provisions were made that these two countries could, by a vote of all their people together, decide whether they wanted to be one country or not.
And there wasn't anything surreptitious about it, that when Ho Chi Minh refused to participate in such an election—and there was provision that people of both countries could cross the border and live in the other country if they wanted to. And when they began leaving by the thousands and thousands from North Vietnam to live in South Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh closed the border and again violated that part of the agreement.
And openly, our country sent military advisers there to help a country which had been a colony have such things as a national security force, an army, you might say, or a military to defend itself. And they were doing this, if I recall correctly, also in civilian clothes, no weapons, until they began being blown up where they lived and walking down the street by people riding by on bicycles and throwing pipe-bombs at them. And then they were permitted to carry side arms or wear uniforms.
But it was totally a program until John F. Kennedy—when these attacks and forays became so great that John F. Kennedy authorized the sending in of a division of Marines. And that was the first move toward combat troops in Vietnam.
So, I don't think there's any parallel there between covert activities or anything
So, Ms. Stahl begins with the mistaken premise that the War in Vietnam began "in a surreptitious, covert manner." President Reagan then proceeds to give Ms. Stahl a lesson in history, something her education at Wheaton College conveniently omitted.
I guess it's not really the liberals' fault. They just know so many things that are wrong.