Tet Remembered
What an irony! This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, the turning point of the Vietnam War and a campaign that has become largely forgotten except by military historians and those who came of age during that prolonged and agonizing conflict. As a completely unexpected marker of that anniversary, last month produced a kind of Tet in reverse. Instead of a huge military invasion, this Tet came in the unlikely form of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear programs. The early returns suggested a blow as devastating to those both in the United States and Iran in favor of a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities as Tet was to American support for Vietnam. But first a word on Tet.
