Word: viets
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Then, as often happened in Viet Nam, one murderous mirage overtook another. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched their general offensive during the lunar New Year, called Tet. Militarily, Tet was a defeat for the Communists. But once again in Viet Nam and in the American mind, illusion triumphed over reality. America, and much of the rest of the world, regarded Tet as shocking proof that the war was a disaster for the U.S., unwinnable...
...first unhappy surprise for Americans came at dawn Viet Nam time on Jan. 30, 1968. Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces attacked Da Nang, the second largest city in South Viet Nam, and seven other major towns. Almost 24 hours later, they mounted a wave of near simultaneous attacks throughout South Viet Nam. They hit 36 of the country's 44 provincial capitals. They overran all but a corner of the historic former capital at Hue. Communists penetrated the heart of Saigon. They attacked the U.S. embassy, the presidential palace, the government radio station. All this was the work...
...Viet Nam and Tet reverberate now in American foreign policy and in American psychology about the rest of the world. Ever since, any attempts to assert American force have twitched a neo-isolationist nerve. Only easy knockouts like Grenada seem tolerable, and then only if done so quickly that television has no time to bring the carnage into the house. But for the experience of Viet Nam, the U.S. might have invaded Nicaragua by now; the threat there is more immediate, the logistics easier. Instead, the battle is waged by proxy, sloppily and tentatively and erratically. "Involvement" and "commitment" have...
More broadly, Viet Nam taught America something about its fallibility. The U.S. may have overlearned the lesson, but it is an instruction that at least < tends in the right direction. Fighting Viet Nam, the U.S. squandered resources it should have devoted to its real international struggles, against Japan, Germany and other economic competitors, against poverty and other problems at home. Those who took the nation into the fetid business of Viet Nam did not look at the real world and see the real dangers to America, the economic Pearl Harbors...
Cover: Photograph of U. S. soldiers in Viet Nam by AP, Janis Joplin by David Gahr, Coretta King by Bob Fitch -- Black Star, and Robert Kennedy by Steve Schapiro -- Black Star