I was doing a little reading over at the Gathering of Eagles website this morning at ran across a post by Beverly Perlson that said:

I leave you with this quote from General Giap of the Vietnam military and I urge all Americans to learn from history and take heed:“What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi! You had us on the ropes. If you pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media were definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!”

So I did a little more digging and found this:

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap

Born: 1912
Place of Birth: An Xa, Vietnam
Military University: none
Wars Fought:
-World War II
-First Indochina War(French-Indochina War 1946-1954)
-Second Indochina War(Vietnam War 1965-1972)
-Third Indochina War 1979-81
Vietnam War:

Gen. Giap planned and directed the military operations against the French that culminated in their defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. During the 1960’s Giap controlled guerrilla operations against South Vietnam and the United States and planned the Tet Offensive of 1968.

In his book, Giap clearly indicated that NVA troops were without sufficient supplies, and had been continually defeated time and again.

By 1968, NVA morale was at it’s lowest point ever. The plans for “Tet” ’68 was their last desperate attempt to achieve a success, in an effort to boost the NVA morale. When it was over, General Giap and the NVA viewed the Tet ’68 offensive as a failure, they were on their knees and had prepared to negotiate a surrender.

At that time, there were fewer than 10,000 U.S. casualties, the Vietnam War was about to end, as the NVA was prepared to accept their defeat. Then, they heard Walter Cronkite (former CBS News anchor and correspondent) on TV proclaiming the success of the Tet ’68 offensive by the communist NVA. They were completely and totally amazed at hearing that the US Embassy had been overrun. In reality, The NVA had not gained access to the Embassy–there were some VC who had been killed on the grassy lawn, but they hadn’t gained access. Further reports indicated the riots and protesting on the streets of America.

According to Giap, these distorted reports were inspirational to the NVA. They changed their plans from a negotiated surrender and decided instead, they only needed to persevere for one more hour, day, week, month, eventually the protesters in American would help them to achieve a victory they knew they could not win on the battlefield. Remember, this decision was made at a time when the U.S. casualties were fewer than 10,000, at the end of 1967, beginning of 1968.

My FRiends, as I have often heard said here at FR and other places, the Vietnam was was lost by the media. I never knew the basis for such statements, but I believed it very possible that they were true.

As Beverly Perlson urged, we MUST learn from history! We cannot allow the same thing that happened in Vietnam to happen here. PLEASE let’s pay attention to history and not let the media defeat us again. They are complicit in the actions of our enemies because they ARE the enemy.

So what can YOU do? The info war is being fought on the airwaves and in newspapers across the country. My challenge to you, is that we be silent no longer. When you see a media distortion of the Truth, please PLEASE write to the paper or call the radio station and point it out. When you see someone on the internet trashing the troops OR the mission, stand up for them. They deserve no less from us. Read some .mil blogs — there are tons of them and there’s no way to read them all, but pick a few favorites and get active.