The antiwar movement didn't shorten the Vietnam War by a single day

[To the question,] "What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?" [Colonel Bui Tin, the NVA officer who received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam in 1975,] replies, "To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year."

In "Dangers of the Fifth Column", Benjamin Duffy compares Iraq and Vietnam.

"What about [Tet's] results?" asked [reporter Stephen] Young. The colonel replied, "Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise; [Commanding General] Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election � If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely."

Tin simply confirms basic intuition. The antiwar movement didn't shorten the Vietnam War by a single day. It made the war longer and bloodier, and it eventually resulted in our nation's first unequivocal military defeat. The movement didn't prevent a single name from being etched onto that black wall. To the contrary, our boys could have been home years earlier, and South Vietnam could be a free country today if the antiwar movement hadn't acted as Hanoi's useful idiots.

Benjamin Duffy proceeds to wonder what questions some people should ask themselves.