The Powers That (Won’t) Be (Down For Breakfast)
The late David Halberstam is provided with a new one, along with a couple of his pals. Ungently by Mark Moyar at NRO:
Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow inadvertently caused enormous damage to the American effort in South Vietnam—making them the most harmful journalists in American history. The leading American journalists in Vietnam during 1963, they favored American involvement in Vietnam, in stark contrast to the press corps of the war’s latter years. But they had a low opinion of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and decided that he would need to be removed if the war was to be won. Brazenly attempting to influence history, Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow gave Diem’s opponents in the U.S. government negative information on Diem in print and in private …
After Diem’s assassination, the South Vietnamese fared very poorly in their war against the Communists, which was why the U.S. eventually had to send half a million troops to South Vietnam. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow quickly realized that as advocates of Diem’s ouster they could be held responsible for wrecking the South Vietnamese government, and so they devised a masterful strategy for neutralizing the accusation …
The Vietnam-era journalists began a tradition that today’s press all too frequently upholds. We hear little from most large press outlets about American heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan—men like James Coffman Jr., Jason Dunham, Danny Dietz, and Christopher Adlesperger who have demonstrated extraordinary bravery in battle—or about our military successes there. Instead of associating the names of heroes with these wars, Americans associate the words they hear most often from the press, like Abu Ghraib and Haditha.
But you’ll want to read the whole thing. For more deepthink on a variety of subjects, with some shallowthink salted in for laughs, of course you’ll be dropping by Driscoll’s, where I found this.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 4:32 pm on Friday, July 6, 2007
2 Responses to “The Powers That (Won’t) Be (Down For Breakfast)”
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July 6th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Halberstam no longer needs the one God gave him, as he is dirt napping.
July 6th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
You might find this of interest?
http://veteranamerican.info/?p=149
Sorta a 1+1= ?