Remembering a Turning Point

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Editor,

Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of the bloody Tet Offensive in Vietnam. In many ways, Tet was the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in the war.  The coordinated attack by 85,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese targeted dozens of major cities and towns in South Vietnam.  To say that it caught U.S.-led forces by surprise is an understatement.

Named after the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, Tet was a holiday the North and South had previously observed together. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces eventually regained control of the areas they lost during Tet. Still, it became a wake-up call for Americans back home who, by now, were watching the horrific news about the war unfold before them daily on TV.

After hearing famed CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite declare the war unwinnable, President Lyndon Johnson told his aides, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, then I’ve lost middle America.”  Regrettably, the war didn’t end in 1968 when I was an undergrad at USC.  It lasted another seven years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

 

Denny Freidenrich, Laguna Beach

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