Posted on 01/31/2008 3:06:56 PM PST by lowbridge
Stanley Johnson returns to Vietnam four decades after the offensive that shattered American confidence in the war — but reflects that the US went on to win the cultural battle
For the last few days they have been putting the flags and bunting up in the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in preparation for the nationwide celebrations which will mark the Lunar New Year or Tet. Forty years ago, on the night of 30–31 January 1968, the Liberation Army, as it is now known here, launched its famous Tet offensive with a series of co-ordinated surprise attacks on a wide range of targets south of the 17th parallel. In and around Saigon, mortars pounded the US airbase at Tan Son Nhut, as well as the US embassy, the Presidential Palace, the General Staff Headquarters of the South Vietnamese Army and the Navy Command.
In the United States, the Tet offensive had a devastating impact on public opinion. President Lyndon Johnson might have proclaimed: ‘We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam.’ But at the end of April 1968, he announced — in a televised addressed to the nation — that he would not run again for President. Robert McNamara, Secretary of State for Defense and one of the principal architects of the war, left to run the World Bank. The 1968 Tet offensive marked the beginning of the end of American efforts to ‘win’ the war in Vietnam. After that, the only way out lay at the negotiating table.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
The US won, and Walter Cronkite lost.
No. Certainly not through the fault of our troops but through the fault of our government and its restricitions on our ability to fight. Considering it is still a communist country, albeit the article uses corporations like KFC, obesity,and more cars on the road to put forth the question, the answer imho is no.
Someone’s gotta post the picture.....
An eyewitness
The most important lesson from the Tet Offensive was how a Democrat congress betrayed a nation and allowed its people to be put into bondage. It was not the first time, nor the last, but is a reoccurring pattern of betrayal by the Democrats.
And it is especially important now.
The question has to be asked, “To what lengths would the Democrat party go to, to insure that both Iraq and Afghanistan are stripped of democracy, and again become tyrannies lead by our enemies?”
The Democrat party has made this their platform, that our enemies are to be engaged to the detriment of our nation, and that our friends are to be betrayed, and if possible, destroyed.
Complicit in this are Republicans who are so weak of character that they do not resist this evil. Who care more for being adored by the media, and feted at cocktail parties, than for the lives of millions of innocent people.
Not that one..........
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