Remembering Tet

Execution of Vietcong suspect by Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan in 1967. (AP: Eddie Adams)

If you haven’t been over to The Washington Independent yet, please take a look

Interesting commentary on the Tet Offensive, January 31, 1968.

By the close of 1967, a half-million U.S. troops were in Vietnam, and Americans at home, viewing the war on television in their living rooms, had become inured to familiar images. Sweating in the fierce tropical heat and humidity, platoons of “grunts” were disgorged from hovering helicopters and cut through thick jungles or crossed flooded rice fields to faraway villages, occasionally stumbling onto mines or booby traps, or drawing fire from concealed snipers. Artillery shelled distant targets from lonely bases while jet aircraft recklessly bombed the boondocks, billows of flame and smoke rising in their wake. The human agony was manifest in scenes of the wounded and dying on both sides—the napalmed children, and the ordeal of innocent civilians caught up in the combat. Despite their private qualms, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his spokesman voiced rosy phrases like “We’ve turned the corner” and “We can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.” But their optimism was shattered on Jan. 31, 1968, the eve of Tet, the Asian new year. At least 70,000 Vietcong guerrillas abruptly poured out of the hinterlands and attacked more than a hundred South Vietnamese cities and towns, including Saigon, where a squad brazenly crashed into the American embassy compound. … .. When War Seems Unwinnable: Why Tet Matters, Stanley Kurnow

Mr. Karnow has been covering the subject since 1959. His article is worth your
time.

Past is prologue. Repeat. Pass down.