A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

p. 318

Americans kept trying to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail, and kill trucks with 6 million dollar jets. But the Vietnamese had lots of trucks and they were easy to replace. They also had lots of soldiers and they just kept coming. The 1968 Tet Offensive exposed General Westmoreland’s “War of Attrition” as a pipedream and fiasco. “The winning of the war was not ‘coming into view.’ The war in Vietnam was never going to be won. Nothing had been achieved by the outpourings of lives and treasures and the rending of American society. The assurances the public had been given were the lies and vaporings of foolish men.”