No More Learning

" In a 1971 CBS documentary entitled "The Changing War in Indo- china," Charles Collingwood reported the progress of the pacification campaign in Kien Hoa Province in the Mekong Delta-"once an NLF stronghold," Hallin observes. This province had been the target of Operation Speedy Express in early 1969, one of the most brutal Ameri- can operations of the war in an area that had been organized under NLF control with no known North Vietnamese presence, conquered through the "awesome firepower" ofthe Ninth Division. This included air strikes using napalm, high explosives, and anti-person~el bombs, B-52 bombing, and artillery shelling "around the clock" at a level that "it is impossible to reckon," with armed helicopters "scouring the landscape from the air night and day" and accounting for "many and perhaps most of the enemy kills"-about 11,000 according to the U. S. command, with 748 weapons captured, a fair indication of who was
THI! INDOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 205
killed. 9() Collingwood was pleased to observe progress in pacification, although there was still "Indian country" beyond. "This is almost like St. Louis on the move into the frontier," his companion, a U. S. govern- ment adviser replied, in a reference that is more accurate than he probably knew. 91
In contrast to the heroic and humane image ofthe American soldiers defending democracy, the NLF and North Vietnamese were portrayed in "an almost perfectly one-dimensional image . . . as cruel, ruthless and fanatica1. " Of twelve positive comments by journalists that he found throughout the war, Hallin remarks, "10 concerned the effectiveness of enemy forces: this was the only element of television's image of the enemy that changed substantially" in the course of the pOSt-Tet shift, mirroring establishment qualms about the prospects for the success of American arms. "What did not change was the dark picture of evil. " When U. S. forces burned villages, this was a necessity because they provided cover and support for the Viet Congo The results of B-52 saturation bombing were a "tragedy of war. " But when a North Viet- namese artillery shell hit an orphanage in An Hoa in October 1970, ABC's George Watson commented with horror: "No one was prepared for the massacre, the irrational murder that the North Vietnamese inflicted on An Hoa. " Although civilian casualties were overwhelmingly the result of U. S. firepower, attribution of responsibility by television was weighted by a 10 to 7 ratio to the account of the enemy; its "calculated policy of terror" contrasted with the unfortunate but legiti- mate side-effects of U. S. operations. Even military operations of the enemy were "terrorism. " Reporting on a Viet Cong ambush of an American patrol, ABC's Peter Jennings recounted "another of those small but {and here he paused a moment for dramatic effect] harrowing VC butcheries" (October, 1965). The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were portrayed as "savage," "brutal," "murderous," "fanatical," "sui- cidal," "halfcrazed," mere vermin in areas that were "Communist in- fested" or "Vietcong infested," and thus had to be cleansed by the American liberators. 92
The style and technique are familiar in state propaganda of all varieties.
Overall, Hallin concludes from his survey, television never veered from the official interpretation of the war as "a struggle to defend democracy against aggression. " In the early years, it was taken for granted that
we would surely win, not only because we were more powerful but because the right was clearly on our side. T e1evision held this view
206 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
strongly, perhaps more strongly than the public itself. It didn't work out that way, and eventually television brought the bad news. But it never explained why: it never reexamined the as- sumptions about the nature of the war it had helped to propagate in the early years. So to the public, the bad news must have seemed nearly as incomprehensible as an earlier "American de- feat" in Asia: the "loss" of China.
Attribution of the American failure by the public to "treason" or "lack of American will" caused by the failure of the media to support our just cause with sufficient fervor is, therefore, "hardly surprising. "93
This may well explain why the public has apparently been willing to accept the tales about media treachery. But among the educated elites, the explanation may lie elsewhere: in a totalitarian cast of mind that regards even the actual level of media subservience to the state as inadequate and a threat to order and privilege by the "forces of anarchy . . . on the march. "
5. 5. SOME CRUCIAL EVENTS OF THE WAR
5. 5. 1. The Tonkin Gulf incident
By mid-I964, there was a growing consensus among Vietnamese in favor of a negotiated political settlement, while the United States was maneuvering with increasing desperation to evade what internal docu- ments describe as "premature negotiations. " The reason, as frankly explained, was that the United States was politically isolated, in opposi- tion to the NLF, the non-Communist opposition, and even the gener- als. It was therefore regarded as necessary to expand the war to the North to "obtain [the DRV'sJ cooperation in bringing an end to the Viet Cong insurgency" and to "persuade or force the DRV to stop its aid to the Viet Cong and use its directive powers to make the Viet Cong desist" (Ambassador Maxwell Taylor). Intelligence, meanwhile, con- cluded that "the basic elements of Communist strength in South Viet- nam remain indigenous. "94-
U. S. -run military operations against North Vietnam began on Feb- ,-
THE INDOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 207
ruary I, 1964 (OPLAN-34A), using South Vietnamese and "third-coun- try" mercenaries, "presumably mostly Nationalist Chinese," according to Kahin. These operations were officially "designed to result in sub- stantial destruction, economic loss, and harassment. "95 On July 30-31, Saigon Navy vessels attacked North Vietnamese islands, eliciting an official DRV protest to the International Control Commission on July 31. The U. S. destroyer Maddox, conducting an electronic espionage operation in that general area, entered the twelve-mile zone regarded by North Vietnam as its territorial waters on August 2. The Maddox was challenged by North Vietnamese patrol boats, fired "warning shots," and was hit by a single bullet in the ensuing battle, in which the patrol boats were damaged or destroyed by the destroyer and U. S. aircraft. On August 3, Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a (secret) cable to Ambassador Taylor, stating that "We believe that present Op Plan 34 A activities are beginning to rattle Hanoi, and Maddox incident is directly related to their efforts to resist these activities. " The Maddox was returned to the area along with the destroyer TurnerJoy on August
3, and on August 3 and 4 Saigon naval vessels bombarded North Viet- namese coastal facilities, "quite possibly one that the destroyer's elec- tronic surveillance had activated and located," Kahin observes. There was some indication that the U. S. destroyers might have come under attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on August 4, although Captain John Herrick of the Maddox was unsure, and radioed that reports "appear very doubtful" and that there were "No actual sightings by Maddox," recommending "complete evaluation before any further ac- tion. " Subsequent evidence indicates that almost certainly no attack took place. 96
On August 5, President Johnson publicly denounced the "open ag- gression on the high seas against the United States of America" by the North Vietnamese, while the DRV and China stated that "the so-called second Tonkin Gulf incident of 4 August never occurred" (Chinese government statement). On August 5, U. S. planes bombed North Viet- namese instalJations and destroyed North Vietnamese patrol boats. After testimony by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in which he
falsely claimed that the Maddox "was operating in international waters, was carrying out a routine patrol of the type we carry out all over the world at all times," Congress passed a resolution authorizing the presi- dent to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" (416 to a in the House, Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening alone in opposi- tion in the Senate). This August 7 resolution was subsequently ex-
208 MA:O>UFACTURING CQSSENT
ploited as the basis for the escalation of the U. S. attack against Viet- nam. 97
"The Gulf of Tonkin incident," Hallin observes, "was a classic of Cold War news management. . . . On virtually every important point, the reporting of the two Gulf of Tonkin incidents . . . was either misleading or simply false"-and in accordance with the needs of the U. S. executive at that crucial moment. The New York Times had re- ported sabotage missions against the North as recently as July 23, and reported Hanoi's August 2 protest of an attack on North Vietnamese villages by Laotian Air Force planes, but neither the Times nor the Washington Post mentioned these facts "either at the time of the inci- dents or in the weeks that followed, aside from inconspicuous sidebars on Hanoi's 'allegations' [which were accurate, but dismissed] and a passing reference" in a column by James Reston. The reporting was "objective" in that it correctly reported U. S. government statements, raising no question about them, presenting no relevant background, and marginally citing Communist denials while proceeding to report the events as Washington wished them to be perceived. 98
In subsequent weeks, the Times published a number of brief refer- ences to what was "charged" or "asserted" in the generally accurate reports from North Vietnam, which were rejected and dismissed by reporters while front-page stories and headlines presented the false Washington version as fact, with much speculation about Hanoi's mo- tives in sending a few patrol boats to attack the mighty U. S. Seventh Fleet. The relevant background continued to be ignored or buried with marginal references in back pages. The criticism by Senator Morse was barely mentioned, and dismissed. There was no hint of administration doubts that the August 4 incident had even taken place. 99
The newsweeklies adhered still more rigidly to the government prop- aganda line, even providing vivid and dramatic accounts of the August 4 incident, which apparently never took place. The accurate criticism by Senators Gruening and Morse received a few lines, dismissed as "predictable" responses by the "irascible" Morse. There was no inter- est in their charge that the Tonkin Gulf resolution had been predated, also dismissed by the Times without inquiry. North Vietnamese and Chinese reactions were dismissed as "bluster" by Communists who "boiled with hatred and hostility toward the U. S. " (Newsweek) and "propaganda blasts" (U. S. News & World Report). None ofthe weeklies considered the possibility that U. S. actions might have provoked the August 2 incident, or that there were doubts in Washington about the August 4 attack, although some of the relevant facts had been briefly
THE I"DOCHINA WARS (r): VIETNAM 209
noted (e. g. , Tim~ July 31, noting missions inside North Vietnam by parachuted sabotage teams). The U. S. government version was simply adopted as unquestioned truth, with no further discussion or inquiry necessary. IOO
There were ample grounds at the time for suspicion about the U. S. government version. The foreign press was able to see that serious questions arose. Le Monde presented public statements on all sides and an analysis of what the public record indicated. "Neither the Times nor the Pose made any such analysis of the record," simply taking the false Washington version to be correct and dismissing the accurate Communist "allegations" with a bare mention. 101 In London, the New Statesman covered the U. S. and Chinese versions, including the (accurate) Chinese account of the U. S. -Saigon actions that preceded the incidents and the charge that the first was provoked by Washington while the second never occurred, and concluding that "the incidents in Vietnam do not seem quite as simple as the initial headlines indicated" (a substantial understatement). In the United States, the left-wing National Guardian, with five major articles, and I. F. Stone's Weekly provided the most extensive, careful, and accurate account of the events. In contrast to the fevered rhetoric of the main- stream newsweeklies, the National Guardian simply described the facts that were available, asking whether the August 2 "skirmish" had been provoked and whether the "alleged" August 4 incident had taken place. The relevant background and Communist versions were accurately presented, with appropriate questions raised. Wayne Morse's commentary was given ample coverage, as were South Viet- namese General Ky's statements on sabotage missions in North Viet- nam. I. F. Stone's Weekly also reported the facts accurately, adding relevant background ignored by the major media. 102
In summary, the national media, overcome by jingoist passion, failed to provide even minimally adequate coverage of this crucial event, although appropriate skepticism would have been aroused in the mind of the reader of the foreign or "alternative" media, or the reader with the sophistication to treat the media as a disinfonnation system disguis- ing a reality that can perhaps be ascertained with sufficient energy and dedication. The Pentagon Papers analyst describes these events as "an important firebrea. k," noting that "the Tonkin Gulf Resolution set U. S. public support for virtually any action. "103
The willingness of the media to serve as a vehicle for government propaganda helped impel the country toward what they were later to regard as "the tragedy" of Vietnam. The reaction of Congress and the
210 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
public laid the basis for the outright invasion of early 1965, providing suppon for the planners who were secretly concerned that the NLF was continuing "to seek a political settlement favorable to the communists" through the device of "neutralism" and "a coalition government" (Maxwell Taylor, Aug. ro, 1964), and who warned about "Saigon and Vientiane hanky panky with Reds" (John McNaughton, October 1964)-that is, moves toward a political settlement-in accordance with the NLF program as described by intelligence: "to seek victory through a 'neutralist coalition' rather than by force of arms. "I04 When the United States extended the war in early 1965 to try to salvage its position in the South, the media continued to offer total support, in accordance with "the guiding principle of American foreign policy since 1945" as outlined by the distinguished liberal commentator of the New York Times James Reston,
that no state shall use military force or the threat of military force to achieve its political objectives. And the companion of this principle has been that the United States would use its influence and its power, when necessary and where it could be effective, against any state that defied this principle,
which was "at stake in Vietnam," where "the United States is now challenging the Communist effort to seek power by the more cunning technique of military subversion. "lo5
In the Orwellian world of American journalism, the attempt to seek a political settlement by peaceful means is the use of "military force," and the use of military force by the United States to block a political settlement is a noble action in defense of the "guiding principle" that the use of military force is illegitimate.
The United States then proceeded to fight a long and brutal war to try to achieve its objectives in Vietnam, demolishing much of Indo- china in the process and leaving a legacy that may never be overcome. Finally, in January 1973, the United States formally accepted a peace treaty that was virtually identical with the Vietnamese consensus it overturned by violence in 1964, except that by that time, the indige- nous NLF had been effectively demolished and little remained in In- dochina outside of North Vietnam, laying the basis for North Vietnamese domination of Indochina, exactly as had been pr~dicted, long before, by "the wild men in the wings. " The media bear a major responsibility for these tragic events, coverage of the Tonkin Gulf incident with its congressional "blank check" for further aggression serving as a notable example. io.
THE INDOCHiNA WARS (i): ViETNAM 2II
5. 5. 2. The Tet offensive
Media coverage of the Tet offensive has been the centerpiece of the critique of the media for "losing the war" by their incompetent report- ing and their anti-government bias reflecting their passion for confront- ing authority. The authoritative "proof' of this contention was provided in the two-volume Freedom House study by Peter Braestrup. Conducted over a six-year period with a wide range of distinguished participants and consultants, and support acknowledged from some two dozen corporations and labor unions, this study was hailed as a "monu- mental" work by Don Oberdorfer in a WashinglOn Post magazine cover story on the tenth anniversary of the offensive, with the title: "Tet: The Turning Point: How a 'Big Event' on Television Can Change Our Minds. " Professor John P. Roche, of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, "intellectual-in-residence" for the Johnson administration, described the Freedom House study as "one of the major pieces of investigative reporting and first-rate scholarship
of the past quarter century," a "meticulous case-study of media incom- petence, if not malevolence. " In a relatively critical discussion in the Times's Sunday book review, Edwin Diamond praises this "painstak- ingly thorough study of how the Vietnam war was presented to the American public by its leading image makers," a "highfalutin' epis- temological quest" by a "conscientious . . . reporter-analyst" that raises profound questions about "how do we know what we know," revealing "the biases introduced by standard journalistic assumptions and organi- zational practices" that contributed to undermining the U. S. position in Vietnam among the general public and Congress. Similarly, Charles Mohr reports that in a conference of "aging hawks and doves" on the tenth anniversary of the Tet offensive at the University of North Caro- lina, "Journalism came in for some strong criticism and only a rather muted defense. " The criticism was by Braestrup, who "expounded gently the theme of his recent book," Big Story, and the hawks in attendance, "while some of the reporters there demurred only softly. "
The study is regularly cited by historians, without qualification, as the standard work on media reporting of the Tet offensive, "in some re- spects as important as the battle itself," here "analysed in depth" (R. B. Smith). 106
Oberdorfer too accepts the conclusions of the study as proven: it was the" 'Big Event' on television" that changed our minds about the war. The only commentary he cites, even obliquely, accepts this judgment (Roche and others unnamed). Within the mainstream more generally, it is assumed with little question that this remarkable scholarly contri-
2J2 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
bution made its case, though one may debate whether it revealed "ma- levolence" or deeper problems of "standard journalistic assumptions and organizational practices," reflecting perhaps the "adversarial stance" of the media with regard to established power.
Braestrup claims to have shown that the reporting of the Tet offen- sive is "an extreme case" cf the "unsatisfactory" performance of the media: "Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retro- spect, to have veered so widely from reality" by presenting <<a portrait of defeat for the allies"-"allies" being the term regularly used to refer to the U. S. invaders, the local forces they organized, and the largely mercenary forces they introduced to support U. S. military operations in Indochina, and a term chosen to exploit the favorable connotations provided by World War II, when "the allies" fought "the Axis. " "To have portrayed such a setback for one side [them] as a defeat for the other {us]-in a major crisis abroad--cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism," which "shouted that the patient was dying, then weeks later began to whisper that he somehow seemed to be recovering-whispers apparently not heard amid the clamorous domes- tic reaction to the initial shouts," with television the worst offender. The whispers began "about late February," he asserts. These joumalis~ tic failures, Braestrup concludes, reflect "the more volatile journalistic style-spurred by managerial exhortation or complaisance-that has become so popular since the late 196050," accompanied with "an often mindless readiness to seek out conRict, to believe the worst of the government or of authority in general, and on that basis to divide up the actors on any issue into the 'good' and the 'bad. ' "The "bad actors" include the U. S. forces in Vietnam, the "military-industrial complex," and the CIA, among others, while "the good" in the eyes of the media are presumably the Communists, who, Braestrup argues sardonically throughout, were consistently overpraised and protected. The prospect, he foresees, "is for a continuation of the current volatile styles, always with the dark possibility that, if the managers do not themselves take action, then outsiders-the courts, the Federal Communications Com- mission, or Congress-will seek to apply remedies of their own," a proposal taken up in Roche's call fOT a congressional inquiry and the subsequent warnings of the Trilateral Commission, cited earlier (Big
Story, I, 705ft". )
The Braestrup-Freedom House thesis has two essential components:
(I) coverage of the Tet offensive illustrates media incompetence and their "adversarial stance"j (2) by their portrayal of an American victory as a defeat, the media bear responsibility for the loss of American resolve and the subsequent American defeat in Vietnam. It is the sec-
THE 11<ODOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 213
ond component of the thesis that carries the dramatic impact, and that has permitted it to set much of the agenda for subsequent discussion of the fourth estate and the dangers that its new-found power and "sixties' style" of "mindless" hatred of authority pose for the very survival of free institutions and democracy.
The first component of the thesis is commonly accepted even by those who deny the second. Thus, rejecting "the stab-in-the-back the- sis," George Herring nevertheless observes: "That the media was hos- tile to the war and to Johnson seems clear, and much of the reporting of Tet was misleading"; these "distortions of the media" may have contributed to "growing popular discontent" with the war and "public anxiety," Herring adds, but these were not the operative factors in Johnson's decision to de-escalate and seek negotiations after Tet. tO?
An analysis of the facts and the argument demonstrates that neither component of the Freedom House thesis is tenable. The second, as we shall see, is conceded in the Freedom House study to be false with regard to public opinion, and the straw at which they then grasp will plainly not bear the weight. As for the first component, on the narrow question of professional competence in reporting the facts available under trying and confused circumstances, the performance of the media was acceptable if not outstanding, and compares quite favorably to the internal reporting of the American military authorities and U. S. intelligence, insofar as these are available. But when we turn to broader questions of the sort discussed earlier-that is, if we evaluate the media
by the standards that we would properly apply to reporting, say, on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan-we see that indeed they can be faulted in precisely the terms anticipated by the propaganda model. The very example selected as providing the strongest grounds for their accusa- tions by Freedom House and other critics from the jingoist right wing of the political spectrum actually happens to demonstrate the precise opposite of what is alleged-namely, it provides yet another striking illustration of the subservience of the media to the state propaganda system. lOS
The Freedom House study itself provides ample documentation to establish these conclusions, and to refute its own specific allegations point by point. Given the major role that this study and the thesis it allegedly established has played in recent ideology, we will give some attention to the chasm that lies between its interpretation and summar- ies, on the one hand, and the documentary record that it (in part) presents, on the other. 109 The comments and summaries often seriously misrepresent the contents of the documents described or are outright falsifications. The analysis, laced with bitter sarcasm throughout, is
2I4 MANUf'ACT\lI. lN<; CONSENT
thoroughly undermined when compared with the actual documents. When the countless errors and careless and inaccurate comments are corrected, nothing remains of the Freedom House case. The sardonic reference to "straw man journalism," "CBS exclusives" and the like, referring to alleged misdeeds of the media, is misplaced; case by case, we find, instead, "Freedom House exclusives.
"
Before proceeding to details, we should take careful note of the background assumptions that guide this inquiry. As we noted, for Bra- estrup and Freedom House, the "allies" are the United States, the South Vietnamese client government, and the various South Korean, Thai, Australian, Chinese Nationalist, and other forces (largely merce- nary) mobilized by the United States. The "South Vietnamese" include our client government and the armed forces organized, supplied, trained, and directed by the United States, but exclude the indigenous NLF and its supporters, although the U. S. government never had the slightest doubt, and its specialists do not hesitate to concede, that the client regime had little support while its opponents in South Vietnam constituted so powerful a political force that any peaceful settlement was unthinkable. That the United States has a right to conduct military operations in South Vietnam to uproot the NLF and destroy the peas- ant society in which it was based, that its goals are democracy and self-determination, and that its forces "protect" and "bring security" to South Vietnamese peasants are principles taken for granted in the
Brliestrup-Freedom House version, where no patriotic assumption or cliche is ever challenged--or even noticed, so deeply rooted are these doctrines. Correspondingly, the fact that the media coverage surveyed is framed entirely within these patriotic premises passes unnoticed. The Freedom House inquiry cannot perceive fundamental bias favorable to the state because all ofthe premises ofstate doctrine are taken as given. There is "mindlessness" here, as Braestrup observes, although it is not quite what he perceives; rather, we find that Braestrup "mindlessly" adopts what we referred to in chapter 3 as a patriotic agenda, even more so than the media he condemns. And as we described in chapter I, the function of such "flak machines" as Freedom House is to ensure that the press stays within the bounds of this patriotic agenda,
The Tet offensive of January 1968 began on January 21 with a siege by North Vietnamese (NVA) regulars of a U. S. military base at Khe Sanh. near the 17th parallel. It was soon apparent that the purpose was to draw U. S. forces away from populated centers, and the siege suc- ceeded in this aim, as General Westmoreland rushed combat forces to the northern areas. On January 31, all major cities and thirty-six of forty-four provincial capitals, along with numerous other towns, came
THE INDOCHINA WAllS (I): VIETNAM 215
under simultaneous attack by southern NLF resistance forces ("Viet Cong"), along with some NVA elements. The effects are succinctly summarized by Wallace Thies in his scholarly study ofthe U. S. strategy of "coercing Hanoi":
" . although U. S. military commanders would later claim that the offensive had been anticipated and that the heavy casualties suf- fered by the attackers had resulted in a great victory for the Allies, the offensive was in fact a military setback for the American side. To meet the threat in the northern provinces and forestall a Dien Bien Phu-type defeat at Khe Sanh, half of all U. S. maneuver battalions in South Vietnam were deployed in I Corps (in the north]; the rest, along with the bulk of the combat-ready ARVN [GVN, Government of (South) Vietnam] units, were tied down defending the cities against the possibility of a second wave of attacks. As a result, the countryside went by default to the NLF, the pacification program was left in a shambles, and whatever losses the DRV / VC (North Vietnamese / Viet Cong] forces did suffer in the initial assaults were largely offset by the unimpeded recruiting that they conducted in the rural areas in the weeks that followed. 110
International Voluntary Services (IVS), which had a close familiarity with the situation in rural areas, withdrew most of its field workets in early 1968 because of "security conditions. " A volunteer reported in February: "The number of locations at which we can safely place a volunteer have significantly decreased in recent months"; another added that "we all knew that security in the countryside was getting worse and worse," contrary to the optimistic evaluations of the U. S. high command and Washington, which were relayed with little skepti- cism by the media in the pre-T et period. A South Vietnamese senator estimated that after Tet, the government controlled "only one third of the country," the remaining two-thirds being in the hands of the NLF, an estimate consistent with U. S. intelligence reports. I I I
The Tet offensive left Washington in a state of "troubled confusion and uncertainty," Undersecretary of the Air Force Townsend Hoopes observed, and "performed the curious service of fully revealing the doubters and dissenters to each other, in a lightning flash," within the Pentagon. While General Westmoreland persisted with the optimistic assessments that had been undermined by this dramatic demonstration that the NLF remained firmly rooted in the South despite the devastat- ing American attack on the rural society, the reaction in official Wash-
216 MAKUFACTURING CONSENT
ington circles was quite different. Summarizing the impact in Washing~ ton, George Herring observes that in private,
Johnson and his advisers were shocked by the suddenness and magnitude of the offensive . . . and intelligence estimates were much more pessimistic than Westmoreland. . . . An "air of gloom" hung over White House discussions, [General Maxwell] Taylor later observed, and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen- eral [Earle] Wheeler likened the mood to that following the first Battle of Bull Run. l12
General Wheeler reported that "to a large extent the VC now control
the countryside," the situation being particularly bad in the Mekong
Delta, and the Pentagon systems-analysis group concluded that "our
control of the countryside and the defense of the urban areas is now
essentially at pre-August 1965 levels," when the U. S. war was being lost,
according to General Westmoreland. A U. S. government military-his-
torical summary of the offensive in the Mekong Delta, completed in
April 1968, concluded that "The Tet offensive in IV Corps had a devastating effect on the Revolutionary Development [pacification] I Program. " As we shall see, these internal assessments are considerably
more "pessimistic" than those of the media that are denounced for the crime of excessive pessimism by Freedom House standards.
We might incidentally note that in IV Corps (including the Mekong
Delta), there were "no regular North Vietnam units" according to 1 Defense Secretary McNamara; the Freedom House study states that , "In the southernmost Delta, it was an ARVN-Vietcong [actually, U. S. -
Vietcong] guerrilla struggle," and more generally, Hanoi "had yet to
commit sizable (multi-division) forces in sustained, concerted attacks" , anywhere in South Vietnam (I, 24). 113 These assessments are what
motivated the mass-slaughter campaign carried out in the rural areas
of the delta and elsewhere in the post-Tet accelerated pacification
campaign, discussed earlier.
Even before the Tet offensive, Defense Secretary McNamara had privately concluded that military victory was an unreasonable objective and that the course of the war should be changed. Clark Clifford, who wa'3 brought in to replace him after Tet, had long '3hared such doubts, and they were reinforced by the evidence available to him and by the conclusions of the "Wise Men" whom Johnson called in to assess the situation. 114 Dean Acheson, who headed this group of longtime hawks drawn from business and political elites, agreed with Clifford's pessi- mism and "advised Johnson to scale down ground operations, reduce
J j
THE INDOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 217
the bombing, and seek every means of terminating hostilities without abandoning South Vietnam. " The "Wise Men," "after full briefings from diplomatic and military officials, confirmed Acheson's findings . . . the consensus, as summed up by one of the participants) was that 'rhere are no military concJusjons in this war--or any military end in the future,' " so that "Johnson should therefore de-escalate the con- flict. "115
Notice that at this point some rather serious problems arise concern- ing the second component of the Freedom House thesis: that the mis- deeds of the media caused the public to oppose the war, undermining government resolve and leading to U. S. failure in its (by definition, benevolent) aims. To establish the "stab-in-the-back" component of the Freedom House thesis, it is necessary to show that public opinion was swayed toward opposition to the war by media coverage, and that the media and public opinion were a significant factor in the shift of government policy. Neither claim can be sustained.
With regard to the course of public opinion, the Freedom House study decisively refutes its own thesis. It includes a chapter on public opinion polls by Burns Roper, which demonstrates, as Braestrup con- cedes, that "there is no available evidence of a direct relationship between the dominant media themes in early 1968 and changes in American mass public opinion vis-a-vis the Vietnam war itself)" but rather a continuing "slow drift toward the dove side" after an initial wave of support for the president and "frustration and anger at the foe" during the T et offensive. A closer examination of their own data under- mines the Freedom House thesis even more thoroughly. The early response to the Tet offensive, during the period when media incompe- tence and unwarranted pessimism were allegedly at their height, was "an increase in the belligerency of the American public"; "the immedi- ate reaction of the U. S. public was to favor stiffened resistance [that is, U. S. resistance to an attack by South Vietnamese in South Vietnam] and intensified U. S. effort. " The major sentiment aroused was "Bomb the hell out of them. " In later February and March) when the media, in the Freedom House version, were beginning to "whisper" the true story of American victory) "there developed a decided negative reaction to the President's handling of the war and the war itself) and a distinct opposition to more aggressive U. S. military action. " In early February
1968, when the impact of the alleged media "distortions" and "pessi- mism" reached its peak, public opinion shifted toward the "hawks. " Public opinion returned to the pre-Tet figures by late February, when the media were allegedly correcting their earlier errors. By April, after the offensive had ended and the "errors" had been overcome (albeit in
zr8 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
a "whisper"), there was a sharp shift toward the "doves. " By April- May-June, measurements had returned to pre-Tet levels. "When looked at on this broader time scale, the T et offensive appears merely to have caused a minor ripple in a steadily changing attitude toward our involvement in the war," a shift toward the position of the doves after an initial shift toward the hawks during the period of media "pessi- mism. " Tet was just "one more incident" that "reminded the public that the war was not going well-that the confident predictions out of Washington had to be taken with a grain of salt-and that helped move public opinion in the antiwar direction in which it had been moving for nearly three years. . . . "H6
Faced with this thorough refutation of one essential component of their thesis, without which the thesis loses aU significance even if the residue were tenable, the Freedom House analysts retreat to the posi- tion that although the public was unaffected by the perverse behavior of the media, there was an effect "on the nation's 'leadership segment'" (Burns)-a safer claim, since, as they concede, no data are available. The director of the Freedom House study, Leonard Sussman, con- cludes that "the Tet offensive, as portrayed in the media, appeared to have had a far greater effect on political Washington and the Adminis- tration itself than on the U. S. population's sentiment on the war" (1, xxxiv). The media failures, in short, left the public unaffected or even more supportive of the war while they misled the government-along with presidential adviser Clark Clifford, the "Wise Men" from the corporate, political, and military elites including fotmer top-level mili- tary commanders, and such media addicts as Dean Acheson, Henry Cabot Lodge, McGeorge Bundy, Douglas Dillon, Robert Murphy, etc. We are asked to believe that their decision to move toward disengage- ment in a situation that they perceived as one of stalemate was based not on military briefings, intelligence reports, and all the information available at the highest level to official Washington, but on watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite. w
In short, we can dismiss out of hand the second component of the Freedom House thesis, the component that had dramatic impact and continuing influence within the post-Vietnam "right turn" among elites and that has set the agenda for subsequent discussion about (he "advet- sarial stance" of the media and its grim consequences. We are left with the conclusion that the media were either irrelevant, or that they con- tinued to operate within the general confines of the approved ideologi- cal system, thus refuting the first ~omponent of the thesis as well. All that remains of the Freedom House story is the possibility that the media were incompetent (even malevolent). but ineffectual. Notice that
THE l"'DOCHINA WARS (I): VIET"'AM 219
the Freedom House thesis here faces the same "logical problem" noted earlier with regard to the charges concerning television: if television is as influential as claimed) then the evidence shows that through 1967 it "encouraged a decisive majority of viewers to support the war. "
To evaluate the remaining shreds of the Freedom House thesis) let us continue with the record of the T et offensive, now asking whether the media did in fact distort it in their zealous-although utterly inef- fectual---efforts to undermine authority.
With lavish use of firepower, U. S. forces succeeded in regaining control of the towns and cities. The city of Hue, which had been conquered from its own population by GVN troops with American assistance several months earlier in a desperate U. S. effort to prevent the growth of popular movements calling for democracy and a nego- tiated political settlement,liS was 80 percent destroyed by bombing and shelling, which left 2,000 civilians buried in the "smashed ruins," ac- cording to U. S. Air Force Undersecretary Townsend Hoopes; the ma- rines listed "Communist losses" at over 5,000, while Hoopes states that a "sizable part" of the Communist force of 1)000 men who captured the city escaped) allowing a determination of who constituted the "Com- munist losses. " U. S. AID in May estimated that some 4,000 civilians were left dead in the ruins of the city, most of them victims of U. S. firepower. 119
In the Mekong Delta, "Artillery and air strikes leveled half of My Tho) a city of 80,000, and the provincial capital of Ben Tre {Kien Hoa Province, later devastated in the post-Tet terror campaign; see p. 204], with 140,000 inhabitants, was decimated with the justification, as an American colonel put it in one of the most wideJy quoted statements of the war, 'We had to destroy the town to save it. ' "120 The U. S. command conceded that "the enemy" were overwhelmingly NLF, not North Vietnamese; killed and captured outnumbered captured weap- ons by a factor of five, an indication of who "the enemy" really were. Secretary of Defense MeNamara estimated NVA forces at 50,000 to
55,000 at the end 0? 1967, mostly in northern regions, with some 10,000 troops placed in Viet Cong combat units; the total roughly matches third-country forces, mostly Korean mercenaries, mobilized by the United States as part of its invasion of South Vietnam, and barely 10 percent of the U. S. forces of over half a million men, even excluding the massive forces engaged in the attack against Viefnam and Laos from the sea and from U. S. sanctuaries from Thailand to the Philippines and Guam, employing means of destruction that dwarfed all else in Indo-
china. 121
As noted earlier, the Tet offensive not only reduced Washington to
220 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
gloomy despair and convinced U. S. elites that there was no realistic hope of a military victory in Vietnam at a cost acceptable to the United States, but also changed the character of media reporting and commen- tary, which mirrored the changes in elite opinion. On the ground, American correspondents were able to witness the war at first hand, gaining a view rather different from the sanitized and edited version presented under the control of the American military command. Media commentary at home reflected elite opinion in recognizing that the optimistic forecasts that had been relayed from Washington with little skepticism were inaccurate, and that a long and bitter war lay ahead.
But on-the-scene reporting and domestic commentary never veered from the framework of the state propaganda system. In reporting the fighting in Ben Tre and My Tho in the Delta, for example, the press observed that American infantry participated while the towns were blasted by American bombers, helicopter gunships, navy patrol boats, and artillery to root out the Viet Cong-that is, the South Vietnamese guerrillas who "were probably living with the people," according to an American officer quoted by Bernard Weinraub. Nonetheless, the news reports speak of the perceived need to "blast the city" with jets and helicopter gunships, particularly the poorer and most crowded sections, <<to save other sections of the city and the lives of thousands of peo- pIe . . . " (Lee Lescaze)-people whose lives were threatened not by the southern NLF guerrillas living among them but by the U. S. forces "defending" them from the NLF. Because of Tet, Weinraub explains, "the protection of Ben Tre waS limited," and it was necessary to bring in troops from the U. S. Ninth Infantry Division by helicopter, and to carry out "bombing raids and fire by helicopter gunships and artillery" to "protect" Ben Tre, which "has long been a stronghold of the Viet- cong" and is "sometimes considered a Vietcong rest and recreation area," while surrounding hamlets "thought to be controlled by the Vietcong have been razed by allied bombing and artillery attacks and fire from armed helicopters. " In Ben Tre itself, "the market place is rubble and near the gutted homes nearby women in shawls sit in the noon heat and mourn with loud groans," while "My Tho still smells of death," with halfthe homes destroyed-thanks to the effective "protec- tion" the population received from their American defenders. lZ2
Throughout, it is taken for granted that the forces armed, trained, and supplied by the only foreign element in the delta are "the South Vietnamese," not the South Vietnamese guerrillas living among the population in their "Vietcong strongholds," from whom the United States is "protecting" the population by ferocious bombardment of civilian areas.
THE INDOCHINA WARS (I); VIETNAM 221
Recall that we are now evaluating the remaining component of the Freedom House thesis: that the media were suppressing the American victory in their antiestablishment zeal. In fact, they were reporting the story accurately in a narrow sense, but completely within the frame- work of the government propaganda system-never questioned, in a shameful display of media servility. We may imagine what the reaction would be to a comparable performance on the part of the Nazi or Soviet press. Braestrup's final comment that "a free society deserves better"
of its media (I, 728) is aCCurate enough, although not quite in the sense intended in the Freedom House study.
As throughout the war, the standpoint of the media continued to reflect the perceptions and attitudes of the American military; for ex- ample, an American official who observed: "What the Vietcong did was occupy the hamlets we pacified just for the purpose of having the allies move in and bomb them. By their presence, the hamlets were de- stroyed. "123 The same New York Times report from Binh Dinh Prov- ince-the "showcase" province for pacification-indicates this had been going on, unreported, well before the Tet offensive: "The enemy moves in December-which several military men called a 'softening up' for the offensive-resulted in a wave of allied air strikes on villages. Hundreds of homes were destroyed. "
The U. S. military "resistance"-to borrow the Freedom House ter- minology-took the same form elsewhere. Robert Shaplen reported from the scene that in Saigon,
A dozen separate areas, comprising perhaps sixty or seventy blocks, had been totally burned out. These were almost all resi- dential areas. . . . Most of the damage was the result of rocket attacks by American armed helicopters or other planes, though some of it had been caused by artillery or ground fighting. . . . A modern ten-million-dollar textile plant, containing forty thousand spindles, was entirely destroyed by bombs because it was sus- pected of being a Vietcong hideout. 124
Le Monde correspondent Jean-Claude Pomonti observed that
in the popular suburbs, the Front [NLF] has proven that the only way to eliminate its control is through systematic destruction. To dislodge it, the air force had to level many residential areas. Flee- ing the bombardments, tens of thousands of refugees have poured into the center of the city. us
222 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
Charles Mohr, whom Freedom House singles out for "perhaps the consistently best reporting from Vietnam," reported that "in towns such as Hue, Vinhlong, Bentre and Mytho appalling destruction was wrought when encircled allied forces took the decision to destroy the attacking Vietcong forces by destroying the places they had occupied. " He quotes an American official in Saigon as stating: "The Government won the recent battles, but it is important to consider how they won. At first the Vietcong had won and held everything in some towns except the American military compound and a South Vietnamese position. "126 By "the Government," he means the reader to understand the GVN, who "won" thanks to U. S. firepower and troops.
As in this example, the U. S. government claim that the Tet offensive was a military defeat for the Communists was widely reported, although the U. S. government official's perception of an initial Viet Cong victory
goes well beyond the typical media accounts in the crime of "pessi- mism. " "Journalists generally accepted the official claim that Tet was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese and NLF," Daniel Hallin concludes in his review of the press and television; for example, Walter Cronkite, who said at once over CB8---0n February 14-that "first, and simplest, the Vietcong suffered a military defeat. "127 Clear and forth- right.
These facts do not comport well with what remains of the Freedom House thesis: the charge that until late February, the media portrayed the enemy's defeat as "a defeat for the allies" in "clamourous shouts," only conceding from late February in a "whisper" that this was not quite accmate, television being the worst offender, with Walter Cron- kite the arch-criminal. 128 It was this gross incompetence or malevolence that illustrates most dramatically the "mindless readiness . . . to believe the worst of the government or of authority in general. " In the real world, the facts were quite the opposite, and the last remnants of the Freedom House thesis thus disappear, apart from the charge, to be evaluated in the appendix, that the reporting was technically in-
competent.
Some would contend that the issue of "how they won," which con-
cerned the American official cited earlier, is as important as "who won" in evaluating the significance of the Tet offensive. This idea never penetrated the minds of Braestrup or his Freedom House as- sociates, however, at the time or in their study. Consider political scientist Milton Sacks, a specialist on Vietnam and a GVN adviser, thanked for "'Providing historical perspective" for the Freedom House Study (I, xxiii). In February 1968, he wrote, with no further comment: i
THE II'DOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 223
In conventional terms, it now seems clear that the Communists have suffered a military defeat in their Tet offensive. They have expended the lives of thousands of their soldiers without securing a single province or district town of significance. 129
U. S. officials, in contrast, were impressed with the fact that the NLF and NVA occupied vast areas previously thought to be "controlled," wreaked havoc with the pacification program, and were dislodged only by a further and still more violent U. S. attack on the civil society of South Vietnam. It was feared that it might not be an easy task to convince the populace that the Communists were to blame for the slaughter and destruction by U. S. forces. The problem, as reponed from Hue by Marc Riboud of Le Monde in April, was that the popula- tion appeared to compare ARVN behavior unfavorably with that of the NVA or NLF, while the deepest bitterness and resentment was directed against the Americans, whose "blind and systematic bombardment" had turned Hue into "an assassinated city"; this reaction may have also been in part a residue of the deep bitterness and resentment left by the U.