re: #151 The Sanity Inspector

It wasn’t so much the results of Tet that were reported as a victory, as it was that the VC were able to launch the offensive at all. By early ‘68 the thinking was that Westmoreland had essentially succeeded in pounding them flat. They were indeed crushed in the aftermath. They were thereafter reduced to simple terrorism, like rocketing villages to show that the South’s government could not protect them. And also NVA regulars had to start coming south in greater numbers. But the damage to the U.S. military’s credibility was done in the eyes of liberal American opinion-makers, even though broad popular support for the war continued for awhile.

Some public opinion numbers here and a graph here. By February of ‘68 it was already down to 42% and was already seeing a previous decline from a high of 61% in ‘65.