"Sevareid provided a nightly editorial on the CBS Cronkite newscast, and over the years reported from Vietnam. 'I'm sure that Hanoi,' he says, 'kept a very close watch on press coverage, public reaction to it, the demonstrations and so on, and no doubt they were encouraged by that. But the activity they had to respond to was in front of them - a constant reinforcement of the American air force, infantry, artillery, navy, everything else. There may have been a lot of anti-war feeling here but what was coming at them was more and more pro-war American power. So I never quite believed that the reason they fought so hard and tenaciously was because of things going on here.
'You weren't really fighting just a military force. You were fighting a society, a society equipped with a total faith.' It was the point which took so many people 10,000 days to grasp.
Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, Michael Maclear, Thames/Methuen, pg. 323-324
