July 19, 2009
Walter Cronkite Has Blood on His Hands
Matt Patterson
On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite delivered his verdict on the (ongoing) war
in Vietnam. The most trusted man in America pronounced that it was "...more
certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam War is to end in a
stalemate."
Stalemate....
The Tet Offensive, which battle prompted Cronkite's televised towel throwing,
was a decisive American victory -- of the more than 80,000 Communist troops who
poured south on the Vietnamese New Year, American and allied South Vietnamese
soldiers would kill or capture more than 58,000, while suffering a combined, and
comparatively light, 9,000 casualties.
Tet was in fact a disaster for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Not only was
the invasion repulsed by American forces - who fought valiantly and fiercely in
spite of being taken by surprise -- but the uprising in the south upon which the
Communists had gambled never happened.
From this, Cronkite conjured his "stalemate." But he was not done with his
shameful propaganda, continuing,
"...it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out
then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived
up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."
Not as victors...thus Cronkite convinced America the war was already over and
lost, while our men, our soldiers, our sons and fathers, were fighting and dying
and triumphing on the field of battle.
Uncle Walter got his wish. America came home -- Saigon fell. The result?
The Viet Cong consolidated its power over the whole of Vietnam. Like all good
Communists, they proceeded to enslave the population, herding hundreds of
thousands into concentration camps to be tortured, starved, and killed. The
people of South Vietnam, who had trusted America and fought alongside us as
allies, put to the sea en masse in whatever rickety craft they could find.
Hundreds of thousands drowned in this desperate attempt to escape; by 1980,
these "Vietnamese Boat People" were recognized as one of the greatest
humanitarian disasters of the modern age, as over 800,000 people fled their
country in terror.
But that was a picnic compared to what happened next door in Cambodia, where the
North Vietnamese-created Khmer Rouge seized power and implemented a policy of
systematic extermination. Out of a population of perhaps 7 million, the
Communists slaughtered between 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians. Millions more were
forced into slave labor.
Walter Cronkite was called the most trusted man in America. He abused that
trust, peddling his own opinion (hope?) - steeped in anti-American ideology - as
fact. The Killing Fields were fertilized with this man's lies.
So speak to me not of this newsman's great legacy - it lays buried under a
mountain of skulls in South East Asia.
Matt Patterson is a National Review Institute Washington Fellow and the
author of "Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story." His email
is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.
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