Just a bit of historical reflection, which may or may not be connected with events of today. I suspect a lot of readers and viewers will be familiar with the first of these interviews, in which President John F. Kennedy declared about the conflict in South Vietnam, “In the final analysis, it is their war.”

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I doubt many are familiar with the follow-up, however. A week later, President Kennedy made clear to another interviewer:

What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don’t like events in Southeast Asia or they don’t like the Government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay.

We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can, but we should not withdraw.

2 SEPTEMBER 1963: PRESIDENT KENNEDY WITH WALTER CRONKITE OF CBS

MR. CRONKITE. Mr. President, the only hot war we’ve got running at the moment is of course the one in Viet-Nam, and we have our difficulties here, quite obviously.
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The famous American newscaster Walter Cronkite died a few days ago, but the obituaries in the British newspapers were few and far between. (This is hardly surprising: when Richard Dimbleby died in the 1960s, I doubt that his obituary appeared in any American newspaper.) However, The Observer did highlighted Cronkite’s famous broadcast from Vietnam at the end of the Tet offensive. This may have been a military victory for the Americans, but it was reported by Cronkite as a political defeat as it became clear to him that the war was unwinnable. While he was criticised for coming off the fence of neutrality, the American public trusted a mere journalist far more than their politicians. Essentially, Cronkite had no trouble telling truth to power.
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