The Anti-War Left have lost Middle America
Or perhaps their thesis has merely become non-operable.
So proclaims James Taranto in today’s Wall Street Journal:
V-AP Day
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
By JAMES TARANTO
July 28, 2008
It is often said that the Vietnam War’s pivotal event was Walter Cronkite’s Feb. 27, 1968, editorial declaring after the Tet Offensive that America was “mired in stalemate” and “that the only rational way out . . . will be to negotiate, not as victors.” President Johnson is supposed to have told an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
In the ensuing years America did indeed negotiate peace. After all U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, the Democrat-controlled Congress cut off all aid to the South Vietnamese government, making it easy for the communists to conquer that beleaguered land.
Forty years later, history is not repeating itself.
In a February 2006 article for The American Spectator (adapted from a November 2005 lecture to the Hudson Institute), we argued that journalists were following Cronkite’s Vietnam-era antiwar script. But, we noted, times had changed since 1968:
The ability of the partisan media to shape events is self-limiting. In the 1960s and ‘70s, journalists had a reputation, built up over decades, for objectivity and fairness--a reputation they have, to a significant degree, squandered. When Walter Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War, it had an impact because he was known as “the most trusted man in America.” Is there any journalist today who comes anywhere close to wearing that mantle?
Just over 40 years after the Cronkite moment, this past Saturday might have seen its inverse. The Associated Press--which of late has been explicitly moving away from the old-style model of objective, impartial journalism in favor of an adversarial style called “accountability journalism"--delivered a surprising verdict on the war:
The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.
Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace--a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
The dispatch from Baghdad includes both reasonable caveats ("That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq") and the obligatory sneer ("The premature declaration by the Bush administration of ‘Mission Accomplished’ in May 2003 . . ."). But the overall message is unmistakable. And as for those who either crave defeat or think it inevitable--well, if they’ve lost the AP, they’ve probably lost Middle America.
Read the whole thing...
Time and past time we drove a stake through the political hearts of the perpetrators of the The Last Helicopter.
So proclaims James Taranto in today’s Wall Street Journal:
V-AP Day
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
By JAMES TARANTO
July 28, 2008
It is often said that the Vietnam War’s pivotal event was Walter Cronkite’s Feb. 27, 1968, editorial declaring after the Tet Offensive that America was “mired in stalemate” and “that the only rational way out . . . will be to negotiate, not as victors.” President Johnson is supposed to have told an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
In the ensuing years America did indeed negotiate peace. After all U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, the Democrat-controlled Congress cut off all aid to the South Vietnamese government, making it easy for the communists to conquer that beleaguered land.
Forty years later, history is not repeating itself.
In a February 2006 article for The American Spectator (adapted from a November 2005 lecture to the Hudson Institute), we argued that journalists were following Cronkite’s Vietnam-era antiwar script. But, we noted, times had changed since 1968:
The ability of the partisan media to shape events is self-limiting. In the 1960s and ‘70s, journalists had a reputation, built up over decades, for objectivity and fairness--a reputation they have, to a significant degree, squandered. When Walter Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War, it had an impact because he was known as “the most trusted man in America.” Is there any journalist today who comes anywhere close to wearing that mantle?
Just over 40 years after the Cronkite moment, this past Saturday might have seen its inverse. The Associated Press--which of late has been explicitly moving away from the old-style model of objective, impartial journalism in favor of an adversarial style called “accountability journalism"--delivered a surprising verdict on the war:
The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.
Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace--a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
The dispatch from Baghdad includes both reasonable caveats ("That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq") and the obligatory sneer ("The premature declaration by the Bush administration of ‘Mission Accomplished’ in May 2003 . . ."). But the overall message is unmistakable. And as for those who either crave defeat or think it inevitable--well, if they’ve lost the AP, they’ve probably lost Middle America.
Read the whole thing...
Time and past time we drove a stake through the political hearts of the perpetrators of the The Last Helicopter.