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→Controversies about the War: added media bias
[[Max Boot]] wrote:
[[Max Boot]] wrote:
* Numerous bits of conventional wisdom have accreted around the Vietnam War. It is commonly held that [[Ho Chi Minh]] was a Vietnamese nationalist above all, not a true [[communist]], and that his victory was inevitable. That [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] was an unpopular and repressive [[reactionary]]. That the United States had no vital strategic interest in defending South Vietnam. That the ‘[[domino theory]]’ was a myth. That the U.S. was right not to invade North Vietnam or Laos for fear of triggering Chinese intervention. [[Mark Moyar]], a young, bold, and iconoclastic historian, takes a sledge hammer to these hoary beliefs. [His boox] is ‘revisionist’ in the best sense of the word.” [http://www.triumphforsaken.com/]
* Numerous bits of conventional wisdom have accreted around the Vietnam War. It is commonly held that [[Ho Chi Minh]] was a Vietnamese nationalist above all, not a true [[communist]], and that his victory was inevitable. That [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] was an unpopular and repressive [[reactionary]]. That the United States had no vital strategic interest in defending South Vietnam. That the ‘[[domino theory]]’ was a myth. That the U.S. was right not to invade North Vietnam or Laos for fear of triggering Chinese intervention. [[Mark Moyar]], a young, bold, and iconoclastic historian, takes a sledge hammer to these hoary beliefs. [His boox] is ‘revisionist’ in the best sense of the word.” [http://www.triumphforsaken.com/]
==Media Bias==
Charges of western [[media bias]] in favor of the Communist side have often been made by critics.<ref>Leonard Magruder, “I was there and that’s not the way it was”</ref>
British "Encounter" journalist Robert Elegant stated,
“For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and television screens - never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side.”<ref>How to Lose A War: The Press and Viet Nam; Encounter (London), vol. LVII, No. 2, August 1981, pp. 73-90</ref>
The most manifest example is seen as being the portrayal of the TET offensive, in which western media was charged with inspiring and aiding the propaganda war of the communists.
“The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits.”(Truong Nhu Tang - Minister of Justice - Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government - The New York Review, October 21, 1982)
“If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population (that is, media and university elite) gave credence to the most incredible allegations.” (Final Report - Chief of Military History - U.S. Government)
==Vietnam War in Popular Culture==
==Vietnam War in Popular Culture==