{"id":28536,"date":"2012-01-31T01:21:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=28536"},"modified":"2012-01-31T01:21:24","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:21:24","slug":"the-wayback-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28536","title":{"rendered":"The wayback machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today Real Clear Politics’ Morning Edition very slyly ran an Airpower<\/em><\/a> article from 1972 titled The Press and the TET Offensive: a flawed institution under stress.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Tet offensive of 1968 must surely be regarded as one of history’s chameleon campaigns. When the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops assaulted targets throughout the Republic of Vietnam at the end of January 1968, they expected to trigger an uprising of the South Vietnamese people against their government. Despite some spectacular early successes, the attacks failed. The South Vietnamese did not embrace the cause; thousands of sappers, assault troops, and cadres met their deaths before overwhelming allied counterattacks; and the insurgent infrastructure was so decimated at the end of the fighting that no large enemy offensives could be mounted for four years.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the Tet offensive was a turning point in the war, and the North Vietnamese were successful in altering the course of the war far beyond the accomplishments of their army. The American people were shocked that the Vietcong\/ North Vietnamese Army (VC\/NV A) possessed the strength to make the widespread strikes. In the public clamor that followed, President Lyndon Johnson announced a bombing halt and withdrew from the 1968 Presidential race. The policy of Vietnamization was launched, and many Americans concluded that the war was too costly to pursue.<\/p>\n

It has always been clear that the press played a vital role in this dramatic shift of opinion. It has been evident that dissatisfaction with the war among media opinion-makers helped form an American public attitude of discouragement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Written at the very tail end of our war in Vietnam the article details the ignorant and sometimes ideologically duplicitous role the media played in spinning the Tet Offensive. Of course a substantial amount of contemporary scholarship has covered this subject in great depth but to see that, even then, those in the know were well aware of the media’s role in shaping the vital public perception of our wars is quite the juxtaposition of the understanding of the war as portrayed by popular culture. There isn’t much new here but, as we fight out own wars at home against corrupted media institutions, perhaps it will serve as reinforcement of the very real, very tangible, stakes 40 years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today Real Clear Politics’ Morning Edition very slyly ran an Airpower article from 1972 titled The … The wayback machine<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-historical","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}