Althought the US media (particularly Walter Crankcase) portrayed it as a defeat for the US, the ‘68 Tet offensive was a major disaster for the NVA. Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev convened a Politburo meeting for the unstated purpose of finding a patsy to blame for the failure. During this meeting, KGB Director (and future Premier) Yuri Andropov stood up and told the assembly (words to the effect that) “We don’t have to win the war in Vietnam because we’re winning the war on the American college campus.”
RE: The Burns documentary (with Peter Coyote as narrator, no less), I watched the first episode, fully expecting to switch it off after 10 minutes in disgust with all the Anti-American and anti-conservative propaganda. To my shock and surprise, he pretty much drove the ball straight down the middle of the fairway. So I kept watching. Thus far I’ve seen the first three episodes and the people who’ve received the roughest treatment all were Democrats. He’s pretty much roasts JFK and LBJ on a spit for their roles. And of the five presidents featured in those first three episodes, even Harry Truman got harsher treatment than Eisenhower. Ike, in fact, comes out looking pretty good for noting in his personal journals “...[T]hat no military victory is possible in this theater,” and refusing to act unilaterally (after the Brits refused to contribute) to aid the French when they took a shellacking at Dien Ben Phu in ‘54.
“Althought the US media (particularly Walter Crankcase) portrayed it as a defeat for the US, the ‘68 Tet offensive was a major disaster for the NVA.”
Any serious scholar of the TET offensive would come to the exact same conclusion.