Vietnam, Protest, and Counterculture 467reelection campaign and Westmoreland knew this, so with few options and
little imagination, he kept asking for more troops. At the same time, he under-
stood that reinforcements would have limited value. “Killing guerrillas is like
killing termites with a screw driver,” he explained to the president, “where
you have to kill them one by one and they’re inclined to multiply as rapidly
as you kill them.” But Westmoreland, despite his admissions of trouble ahead,
knew that the president wanted to hear good news. Accordingly, during a
November public relations trip to Washington, he optimistically reported that
the war was going well and that he could see “light at the end of the tunnel.”
That “light at the end of the tunnel,” Westmoreland’s critics later joked,
was a train headed toward the general. And at the end of January 1968, it
thundered through Vietnam. Taking advantage of a cease-fire during Tet, the
Asian New Year and a huge celebration, the VC and northern army struck
virtually every military and political center of importance, even invading the
U.S. embassy grounds. Within 60 days, the Tet Offensive would bring down the
president, finally force a reassessment of the war at the highest levels, and
bring to a climax one of the gravest contemporary crises in U.S. history. Tet,
as it were, became the U.S. obituary in Vietnam.
FIGuRE 9-9 Saigon during the Tet Offensive