T here’s been a bit of a change. T he 1960s opened up society in
many w ays, from personal attitudes to dress codes to beliefs. T hat
affected everything, including corporations and the corporate media
—w hich now are, in many respects, less automatically disciplined
than they w ere back in the sixties.
T here w as a column around the same time by Randolph Ryan.
He’s someone w ho came out of the 1960s and did extremely good
reporting on Central America for the Boston Globe in the 1980s.
T he 1960s culture also affected the Globe’s editor, Tom W inship—
w hose son w as a draft resister, incidentally. W hat w as happening
influenced his thinking and improved the new spaper in lots of w ays.
So sure, the 1960s had a big effect. But the publication of the
Pentagon Papers in 1971 w asn’t really part of it.
In 1968, after the Tet offensive [a massive assault by the
southern resistance (called the “Viet Cong” by the U S) w ith the
support of North Vietnamese troops, during the Vietnamese holiday
of Tet], corporate America basically decided that the w ar w asn’t
w orth it. T hey came to believe that w e’d essentially achieved w hat
w e needed to, and that continuing w as just too costly. So they told
Johnson to enter into some form of negotiations and to start
w ithdraw ing American troops.
It w asn’t until about a year and a half later that the media here
began to respond to the opening that corporate America had left for
them by voicing very timid criticisms of the w ar. As I recall, the
first new spaper to call for American w ithdraw al from Vietnam w as
the Boston Globe.
It w as around then that Lew is started saying that the w ar began
w ith “blundering efforts to do good” but that by 1969(!) it had
become clear that it w as “a disastrous mistake” and that the U S
“could not impose a solution except at a price too costly to itself.”
(By the same token, Pravda w as probably saying, around 1980 or
1981, The war in Afghanistan began with blundering efforts to do
good, but now it’s clear that it’s a disastrous mistake and too costly
for Russia.)
Of course, Vietnam w asn’t a “disastrous mistake”—it w as
murderous aggression. W hen the Times starts w riting that, w e’ll
know something has changed.
Most of the important parts of the Pentagon Papers never
appeared in the Times and haven’t been discussed in the mainstream
literature either. T he parts the Times did publish w eren’t all that
ann
(Ann)
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