Monday, December 31, 2007
A '68 (mis)flashback
With an upcoming New Year, we get the inevitable: Sure, There Are Some Echoes, but '08 Won't Be '68
Joel Achenbach offers us this nugget from that long-ago year:
“The Tet Offensive in late January 1968 shocked those who had assumed we were winning the Vietnam War.”
While many were surprised that the North Vietnamese could launch such an effort, make no mistake about it; the Tet Offensive was a significant military defeat for the northern aggressors. That people took – and still take – it to mean that our side wasn’t winning the war is a reflection of the shoddy journalism that accompanied much of that war….and in that regard ‘08 will probably look a lot like ‘68.
Joel Achenbach offers us this nugget from that long-ago year:
“The Tet Offensive in late January 1968 shocked those who had assumed we were winning the Vietnam War.”
While many were surprised that the North Vietnamese could launch such an effort, make no mistake about it; the Tet Offensive was a significant military defeat for the northern aggressors. That people took – and still take – it to mean that our side wasn’t winning the war is a reflection of the shoddy journalism that accompanied much of that war….and in that regard ‘08 will probably look a lot like ‘68.
