Re: Countering Vietnam Misconceptions by Photography
Contributed by Bill Faith
Steve, thank you for an excellent post and for taking the first step toward establishing a valued friendship and good working relationship between Old War Dogs and R J Del Vecchio. Del has declined, at least for now, my offer of a key to the site but we'll definitely be staying in touch. In his words "You're about what I'm about." Just a quick hint of something you'll be hearing more about later: Whitewash / Blackwash: Myths of the Viet Nam War
Excerpt -- Myth #8: Media coverage of the war was balanced and accurate and contributed to development of appropriate US policies
However, the overriding effect of the Tet offensive in the US was extremely damaging psychologically; at the least it convinced many people that the outcome of the conflict was in severe doubt, and at the worst it absolutely confirmed to many others that it was an unwinnable war, or that the US leadership had been deceiving people about the progress made, or both.
Perhaps the pivotal event of the time was a broadcast on February 27th by Walter Cronkite, the greatly respected dean of US newsmen, after his return from visiting the war zone. Although he had previously been at least tacitly supportive of the war, and been reasonably objective in his reporting, in the dramatic TV spot late that February he was strongly negative about what had happened and the general prospects for the future of the war. Some of his statements were clearly in error, he made some predictions that failed to come true, and he wound up declaring the war a "stalemate" that could only be settled by negotiation.
[Read the whole thing here. Seriously. You need to.]
Myths of Vietnam/Lessons for Iraq
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 14, 2005
[...]
FP: So what do you and the others involved in this booklet hope to accomplish overall?
Del Vecchio: The great mass of readily available information about Vietnam is riddled with inaccuracies, misstatements, and some outright falsehoods. Yet it is more critically important today for people to understand the real history of that war than ever, and unless people look carefully among those sources of information to avoid those with major flaws, they cannot hope to glean good information as the basis for thinking about the war and its meaning.
All we hope to accomplish in this booklet, which is written to be clear, concise and objective, is to help people see how many reefs there are in the river of information about Vietnam, and show them how to cruise that river to avoid those reefs. It is still true that sincere, intelligent people may see the same valid data about the war and draw somewhat different conclusions, but if any of the biased and inaccurate information is absorbed, then chances of achieving real understanding become very low, and chances of arriving at a very flawed view of the war become high. Those flawed views have damaged our country too long, and we cannot afford to indulge in them any longer.
[Read the whole thing here.]
To my knowledge there are three copies of Whitewash / Blackwash on the way to OWD members. Of the current "official" members of the pack 8 of us are Viet Nam vets, not to mention some invitees I haven't given up on yet. "Developing ... "
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