Halberstam slams Tet anology

Talking recently with Bob Garfield, David Halberstam, who covered Vietnam for the New York Times and wrote The Best and the Brightest, had a thing or two to say about Tom Friedman’s much-hyped assertion that, “Iraq today … seems like the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive.”

BOB GARFIELD: Do you think Tom Friedman was right?

DAVID HALBERSTAM: I am puzzled reading the Tom Friedman column, which, for someone who’s a very careful, skilled and thoughtful journalist, seems extremely careless in his references to Tet. I think it’s poorly done on what happened to Tet, and poorly compared to what is happening today.

BOB GARFIELD: And yet, George Stephanopoulos hits the President with the question, is this the Tet Offensive of Iraq? And the President shrugs and says, uh, maybe.

DAVID HALBERSTAM: [W]hat’s interesting about the stuff coming out of the Stephanopoulos/Bush interview is that I don’t know what either of them is really saying in terms of placing this in the context of Tet, and what they think Tet means. The President has been exceptionally weak on the history of the Vietnam War…. I mean, I can’t tell exactly what the President is saying, and certainly I don’t have any sense that Stephanopoulos has defined it particularly well or turned to anybody who knew anything much about Vietnam. So it seems to me to be weak reporting, and as far as I can tell, a rather vague answer.”