{"id":9969,"date":"2017-09-15T18:25:25","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T18:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9969"},"modified":"2017-09-16T18:28:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-16T18:28:17","slug":"how-the-pentagon-tried-to-cure-america-of-its-vietnam-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-the-pentagon-tried-to-cure-america-of-its-vietnam-syndrome\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Pentagon tried to cure America of its ‘Vietnam syndrome’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Joseph<\/a>, Tufts University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In August 1965, Morley Safer, a reporter for \u201cCBS News,\u201d accompanied a unit of U.S. marines on a search-and-destroy mission to the Vietnamese village of Cam Ne. Using cigarette lighters and a flamethrower, the troops proceeded to burn down 150 houses, wound three women, kill one child and take four men prisoner. Safer and his crew caught it all on film<\/a>. The military command later claimed that the unit had received enemy fire. But according to Safer, no pitched battle had taken place. The only death had been the boy, and not a single weapon had been uncovered.<\/p>\n

In describing the reaction, Safer would later say that the public, the media and the military all began to realize that the rules of war reporting had changed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The New Yorker\u2019s Michael Arlen dubbed<\/a> Vietnam the \u201cliving room war.\u201d The images of the war \u2013 viewed on evening news shows on the country\u2019s three networks \u2013 enabled the public to understand the war\u2019s human costs. In this sense, media coverage contributed to the flow of information that\u2019s vital to any functioning democracy, and pushed Americans to either support or oppose U.S. involvement in the conflict. <\/p>\n

However, in the country\u2019s myriad military conflicts since Vietnam, this flow of information has been largely transformed, and it is now more difficult to see the human consequences of military operations. Despite a digital revolution that\u2019s created even more opportunities to transmit images, voices and stories, the public finds itself further removed from what\u2019s really happening on the front lines. <\/p>\n

A false narrative exposed<\/h2>\n

Issues of truth, representation, interpretation and distortion lie at the core of the media\u2019s presentation of war. So do power and control. <\/p>\n

Governments aren\u2019t always afraid to show the public what war looks like. During World War II, journalists were subject to censorship<\/a>. Yet in September 1943, President Roosevelt and the War Department allowed Life magazine to publish George Strock\u2019s moving photograph of three dead American soldiers<\/a> sprawled on Buna Beach in the Pacific. <\/p>\n

That decision pointed to the administration\u2019s confidence that the public would continue to support the military, even after being brought \u2013 as the accompanying Life editorial noted<\/a> \u2013 \u201cinto the presence of their own dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Vietnam destroyed the assumption that the public would always support their government\u2019s military policies, and the images accompanying the conflict were partly responsible.<\/p>\n

In Safer\u2019s case, after a heated debate among CBS officials, the footage of American troops setting fire to a Vietnamese village was shown on \u201cThe CBS Evening News\u201d with Walter Cronkite. <\/p>\n

The government seemed to recognize the power of this footage: It reacted swiftly \u2013 and from the top.<\/p>\n

The next morning, President Lyndon B. Johnson called CBS president Frank Stanton to berate the network for airing the footage. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what you did to me last night?\u201d Johnson asked<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d Stanton replied. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou shat on the American flag.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon was also furious because the story challenged their own narrative \u2013 that enemy troops had died, and that American troops were able to distinguish the Viet Cong from the local population.<\/p>\n

Safer\u2019s images would resonate in American culture. Torching a village or field came to be called<\/a> a \u201cZippo mission,\u201d while scenes of setting villages on fire appeared in many Vietnam War films.<\/p>\n

More dramatic images emerged from the war, many of which remain familiar today. There\u2019s Nick Ut\u2019s photograph of nine-year-old Kim Phoc<\/a> fleeing her napalmed village; Eddie Adams\u2019s shot<\/a> of South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executing a Viet Cong on a Saigon street; and Ronald Haeberle\u2019s devastating pictures<\/a> of the 1968 My Lai massacre. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Eddie Adams\u2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon.<\/span>
\n Eddie Adams\/AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They didn\u2019t automatically create public backlash. But viewers couldn\u2019t ignore the chaos that seemed to be emerging from the battlefield. And this had the net effect of debunking the government\u2019s claim that the military was making significant progress in Vietnam. A growing number of critics outside \u2013 and, significantly, inside \u2013 the administration argued the war could not be won.<\/p>\n

A new media strategy emerges<\/h2>\n

On balance it would seem that more skepticism when it comes to judging the need to go to war is a good thing.<\/p>\n

Not everyone, however, would agree. In the years after Vietnam, some members of the political and military establishment wanted to be able to use military force without feeling hamstrung by the possibility of public opposition. <\/p>\n

To them, public exposure to bloodshed and the resulting aversion to going to war had become a major problem. They even had a name for it<\/a> \u2013 the \u201cVietnam syndrome\u201d \u2013 and it required a new media strategy.<\/p>\n

One solution involved imposing strict control over the movements of journalists. The government could no longer afford to allow \u2013 as it had in Vietnam \u2013 enterprising reporters to run around the battlefield, going wherever they wanted and speaking with whomever they pleased.<\/p>\n

During Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War, they organized journalists into small \u201cpools\u201d<\/a> that had tightly controlled access to the battlefield (if at all).<\/p>\n

Even with these restrictions in place, the Pentagon bristled<\/a> at CNN\u2019s dramatic broadcasts of the bombing of Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm. It\u2019s not as if the cable network was even criticizing the attacks; it was the very images of U.S. aircraft bombing a major city that defense officials found so unsettling. The soundtrack alone<\/a> \u2013 the thump of high-yield explosions, the sirens of emergency vehicles, the staccato of anti-aircraft fire \u2013 ran counter to the administration\u2019s preference for their own soundless footage<\/a> of smart bombs being smoothly guided to their military targets.<\/p>\n

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