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Decisive victory would break a stalemated war in South Vietnam. All Rights Reserved. And far too often in the planning process, those expectations are based on unexamined or unrealistic assumptions rather than considered reasoning. Westmoreland requested more than 200,000 new troops in order to mount an effective counteroffensive, an escalation that many Americans saw as an act of desperation. Here again, faulty assumptions drove the argument. But LBJ, unpopular, isolated and foundering, rejected the request. Its leaders and intelligence analysts were making assumptions about the enemy based on the belief that the communists thought and thus behaved like the Americans themselves. The communists proved their ability to keep fighting The US ended the involvement in the Vietnam war because_____ The fallings of Vietnamization and growing dissent in US The high point of President Nixons foreign policy efforts was_________ Unsurprisingly, Cliffords tough questions were being mimicked in the American press. The "general offensive/general uprising" was scheduled to occur during the Lunar New Year festival, or Tet, early in 1968. Ultimately and especially after the fall of Saigon in 1975 the circles of these many flawed assumptions on Tet and its aftermath would have to be squared when writing the history of the American war in Vietnam. Corruption and faulty leadership still plagued the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) in 1968 as they had in 1966 and 1963. NVA regulars and National Liberation Front insurgents dubbed the Vietcong struck 36 provincial capitals, the U.S. embassy in Saigon, and the six largest cities in South Vietnam. With the encouragement of Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Earle Wheeler, Westmoreland renewed an earlier request for more troops. On March 10, 1968, The New York Times ran a story under the headline Westmoreland Requests 206,000 More Men, Stirring Debate in Administration. This request galvanized the public and convinced them that, rather than a Vietnamization of the conflict, Americas involvement was increasing at the cost of American lives in the face of an unfaltering and seemingly unbeatable enemy. Tet Offensive. Peter Arnett of the Associated Press quoted a U.S. Army officer who had just helped liberate Ben Tre, a delta town, as saying, We had to destroy the town to save it. Vietnam, it seemed to more and more Americans, was requiring the United States to sacrifice the very ideals it was supposedly fighting for: liberty, democracy, human rights, the rule of law. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Turns out, the US had made one miscalculation after another. Theres an unfulfilled hunger for a liberal leader who can capture Kennedys spirit without his folly. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. The Tet Offensive had two aims: The Vietcong and North Vietnamese government hoped it would win them support from the South Vietnamese against the Americans, inspiring them to get rid of the current government and force the Americans from the country. Discover the effect of the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive on American morale despite the attack's failure, This article was most recently revised and updated by, Pop Quiz: 19 Things to Know About the Vietnam War, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tet-Offensive, Office of the Historian - U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive, 1968, History Today - The Tide Turns in Vietnam: The Tet Offensive, HistoryNet - The Tet Offensive, 52 Years On, execution of a suspected Viet Cong officer in the Vietnam War. Not only would the Allies be unprepared, but holiday travelers would provide good cover for the Viet Cong to make their move. The Department of Defense provides the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security. Twenty-four hours later, PAVN and Viet Cong forces struck a number of other targets throughout South Vietnam, including cities, towns, government buildings and U.S. or ARVN military bases throughout South Vietnam, in a total of more than 120 attacks. Saigon was hardly the lifeless puppet that communist propagandists painted it to be. And Westmoreland certainly could not allow massed NVA units to roam the border areas unchecked without putting the population in harms way. Tet became a turning pointnot militarily on the ground, but in terms of politics, policy and public opinion back in the United States. His most recent book isWithdrawal: Reassessing Americas Final Years in Vietnam(Oxford University Press, 2017). In John Pradoss words, What happened at Tet was people succumbing to preconception.. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. As 1967 came to a close, however, there was another worry. After several weeks of brutal fighting the Americans And South Vietnamese Army regained control. American organizational, material, and logistical superiority was quickly demonstrated in the early hours of the offensive, and the traditionally unreliable South Vietnamese infantry fought with surprising effectiveness. The offensive derives its name from the Vietnamese New Year holiday, during which the attacks occurred. But there was more to the flawed intelligence picture. American and South Vietnamese troops quickly regrouped, fended off the attackers (the embassy invaders were quelled within hours) and ultimately killed as many as 40,000 enemy soldiers. Similar reactions could be found among the South Vietnamese. Either way, the president's credibility on the war took a hit from which he would never recover. Since the mid-1950s, American strategists and elected officials had considered Vietnam key to the containment of communism across the globe. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Also, the prospect of Donald Trump back in the White House focuses the mind in a way not even the prospect of a Nixon presidency did. A decisive military victory would lead to unification and true Vietnamese independence. Whatever the impetus, the American public grew increasingly vehement in its opposition to the continued presence of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, and the gulf between the inevitably politically driven administration and what the military saw as the most effective means of fighting the war became even larger. If Westmoreland did not actually lie about his evaluations, according to Mose, he also did not realize that the intelligence estimates were being massively biased to fit his expressed preferences. In short, political pressure to demonstrate progress was infecting intelligence assessments and thus affecting strategic planning. Thousands of draftees arent being killed in a faraway war. There are dangers when we assume, as an article of faith, that the merits of employing military power always outweigh the limits of that power. Westmoreland surely had miscalculated the capacity of Hanois forces to launch such a massive offensive. killed his uncle and possibly his father, that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election, and that Covid vaccines are a Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci self-enrichment scheme. Signing up for this newsletter means you agree to our data policy, Withdrawal: Reassessing Americas Final Years in Vietnam. Historian Ronald Spector rightfully has described 1968 as the bloodiest year in Vietnam, yet all that bloodshed could not break the stalemate of a war found ever more questionable by an increasing number of Americans. True, the enemy had targeted provinces adjacent to North Vietnam and his own staging areas in Laos. It was 2:45 a.m., on Jan. 30, 1968the day Vietnam celebrated the lunar new yearwhen Viet Cong troops raced through a three-foot hole they had blown in a wall protecting the United States Embassy in Saigon. The offensive was a crushing tactical defeat for the North, but it struck a sharp psychological blow that eroded support for the war among the American public and political establishment. But Hanois strategic objectives actually lay elsewhere. Throughout the country, some 75,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Nowhere was this truer than during the 1968 Tet offensive. Yet he also responded quickly, moving his forces to parry the enemys assaults and prepare for his own counterattack. A photograph by the Associated Presss Eddie Adams, showing a South Vietnamese national police commander putting a bullet through the brain of a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street, made front-page news worldwide. The North Vietnamese armys 77-day bombardment and siege of Khe Sanh, a five-square-mile Marine garrison, beginning January 21, 1968, riveted much of Americas attention and became an obsession for Johnson, who insisted the fort couldnt be lost. Such faulty assumptions reinforced yet another myth emanating from the ashes of Tet. In preparation for the planned offensive, Giap and his troops in the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a series of attacks in the fall of 1967 on isolated American garrisons in the highlands of central Vietnam and along the Laotian and Cambodian frontiers. The Tet Offensive In January 1968, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong planned an attack on towns and cities in South Vietnam during the Tet holiday - an important celebration. Suddenly, you turn around and we've got a half million people out there and more on the way. It may be the ultimate reason for Trumps enduring, even outlaw, appeal. Was the ongoing fighting in Vietnam actually weakening the United States, both at home and abroad? From the time U.S. combat troops began shipping over to Vietnam in 1965 to fight the spread of communism, Americans werent quite sure what to make of the war playing out in jungles and rice paddies halfway across the world. Le Duans hopes in late 1967 and early 1968 offer us important perspective on strategy at its core, strategy is an aspirational art. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. Why did the Tet Offensive happen? As early as February 4, Westmoreland was reporting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the fighting across all corps tactical zones in South Vietnam in Hue, Saigon, Kontum City, and the Mekong Delta. When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. Without question, Saigons government continued to wrestle with lasting social and political tensions. They saw in the successful rebuke of their enemies attacks an undeniable weakening of communist forces and strength. Fifty years on, what should we make of Tet? The offensive unleashed across the expanse of South Vietnam in late January clearly exceeded the expectations of Westmorelands command. Ten days later the real Tet Offensive began. When I came into the Pentagon job on March 1, 1968, thats when all of the concerns that I might have felt before all began to come to the surface, Clifford said in an interview. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), Johnson announced he would not run for re-election, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/tet-offensive. This is the party whose base has substantially shifted from the high school- to the college-educated; from factory floors and service jobs to breakout rooms on Zoom; from champions of free speech to promoters of speech codes and trigger warnings; from questioning authority (including scientific authority) to offering and demanding unblinking fidelity to it. But the seemingly intractable problem of reestablishing a functioning political community inside South Vietnam would plague the American effort for the wars duration. Nonetheless, they wouldnt fold. Nor, for that matter, did the communists ever insinuate they were going to abandon the war after Tet (though Le Duan would be severely criticized in Hanoi, and the political ascendancy of the militant faction he led was briefly threatened after the offensives failure became evident that summer). Others went a step further, with one officer arguing that elected officials cant meddle in operational matters, and likening such interference to telling a surgeon how to cut., In this way, the history of the Tet offensive turned into a search not for perspective, but rather for blame and a way to determine winners and losers. In February 1968 the communists launched a major offensive in the cities. An official website of the United States Government. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. By departing from classical guerrilla tactics and assaulting southern cities, the North Vietnamese had unwittingly pitted themselves against their opponents greatest strengths. The offensive failed but has been viewed as a turning point. And Johnson should have taken the fight to North Vietnam and gone after the enemy's safe havens in Laos and Cambodia. PA Certificate of Charitable Registration, Great Battles and How They Have Shaped American History. The Battle of Hue Impact of the Tet Offensive Antiwar Movement Grows Sources The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts. Seriously, Not Literally, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/robert-kennedy-democrat-president-2024.html, the C.I.A. At the same time, he announced that Westmoreland would be recalled to the United States to become chief of staff of the army. Installingand maintainingnon-communist leadership in South Vietnam became central to Americas Cold War strategy. See how the North Vietnamese-backed Viet Cong launched surprise attacks across South Vietnam. Jan. 30 marks the anniversary of the start of that campaign, so what better time than now to learn a little about it, right? There are good reasons to doubt it. After Tet, U.S. generals at the heart of the campaign asked to add to the more than 500,000 troops already in Vietnam, hoping to start a counteroffensive. In addition, the widespread loss of life and destruction of property triggered a decline in support for the Viet Cong among the South Vietnamese populace. Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. Early in their occupation of Hue, Viet Cong soldiers conducted house-to-house searches, arresting civil servants, religious leaders, teachers and other civilians connected with American forces or with the South Vietnamese regime. At the same time, Johnson announced he would not run for re-election that November. As President Lyndon B. Johnson and General William Westmoreland focused their attention on the defense of Khe Sanh, Giaps 70,000 poised to begin their true objective: the Tet Offensive. Among the reasons for doubt: Kennedy is a crank. The most obvious message is one that too many Democrats want to wish away: Biden is a weak candidate against almost any Republican, including Trump, and hes probably even weaker with Kamala Harris as his running mate. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. Militarily it was a defeat for the communists. Before then, U.S. forces had been on the ground for more than three years, fighting with South Vietnam's . Senior officials in the White House, however, were asking their own sets of questions. Trumps federal indictment seems to have barely made a dent. McNamara, who had privately admitted to doubts about the war, had already announced his resignation in late 1967 and departed in February 1968 to head the World Bank. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. The Tet Offensive was an American military victory, says Prince. An American tank of the 9th Division among the ruins of a Saigon street after the Mini-Tet offensive in 1968 Halting the Red Tide By the time Viet Cong combatants took up positions in the. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata. If Colin Gray is correct in asserting that surprise is unavoidable in war, then assumptions about cause and effect are critical building blocks of successful strategy. Ultimately, it triggered a series of forces and events that gradually led to the total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam by 1975. Today, we're passing along a bit of history that made a big impact during the Vietnam War the Tet Offensive. On the American side, this realization led to a purposeful campaign by the Johnson White House to publicize wartime progress. Liberals have come to like Biden more during his presidency, whereas they came to like Johnson a lot less. Matthew Dallek, professor at George Washington Universitys Graduate School of Political Management, is author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security. What happens to Biden's candidacy if the economy takes a turn for the worse in the next 12 months, or a foreign adversary springs its own version of the Tet offensive on the administration? Yet the journalistic response to Tet, in truth, proved far more measured than generally has been accepted. Images help to explain this biographical excerpt . Many veterans and particularly senior officers found solace in a storyline highlighting military successes, of a forsaken triumph that ensured the U.S. armed forces could still take credit for their battlefield acumen. And I don't think anybody but a goddamn communist admits it.. So the war ground on, beamed nightly into American living rooms on the evening news. Clifford finally put the matter to the Joint Chiefs directly and came away dismayed by their response. Westmoreland welcomed the news. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victims, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.. But the media hardly painted the picture of an American military defeat during Tet. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Throughout the latter part of 1967, MACV headquarters and the CIA battled over enemy strength estimates, with the military headquarters reaching more bullish conclusions about enemy attrition than the intelligence analysts had. The Viet Congs regular units were decimated and would never completely recover, and its political infrastructure suffered crippling losses, wrote Vietnam War historian George Herring. Then again, not many political observers in 1967 saw what was coming. A failure to think critically about whether doctrine actually works as intended or what enemy response can be expected from a particular action by our own forces is a recipe for disaster. Thats what another Kennedy, Teddy, helped do to another Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, in 1980. On a deeper level, were there invalid assumptions on which the entire war effort had been based? The Tet Offensive was a major surprise attack on South Vietnam orchestrated by NVA commander General Vo Nguyen Giap. It would compel the United States to withdraw its troops. I don't admit that this is a Communist victory. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong paid dearly for their deviation from the guerrilla warfare strategy that had so frustrated U.S. commanders. So, the leader of the north, Ho Chi Minh, set about a plan to break that. Gregory A. Daddis is an associate professor of history and director of Chapman Universitys MA Program in War and Society. Rather, Tet suggests there are weighty consequences when we assume too much about the relationship between action and effect in war. The Tet Offensive became a major turning point in the Vietnam War. The image, The New York Times later reflected, sparked an immediate revulsion at a seemingly gratuitous act of savagery that was widely seen as emblematic of a seemingly gratuitous war.. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. According to this narrative, Westmorelands successor, Creighton Abrams, presided over the consolidation of the Tet military victory and brought the allies even closer to winning the war. Yet Hanois assumptions misread the reality of a political community whose fortunes had improved, if only ever so slightly, in the aftermath of the 1967 presidential elections. This is not to imply that pessimism should serve as the central component of strategic planning. How was the enemy able to get the jump on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops? Many Democrats may have quietly wanted Biden to step aside instead of run. My guess is that we will inflict very heavy losses on them, both in terms of personnel and matriel and this will set them back some, but after they absorb the losses, they will remain a substantial force. Among them was Clark Clifford, the new secretary of defense who had replaced Robert S. McNamara while the Tet fighting raged on. Instead, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong advance was checked by surprisingly resilient ARVN defenders, and most citieswith the notable exception of Huewere liberated within days of the initial attack. HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was called before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and questioned for 11 hours. Senior U.S. advisors in the field knew the all-important pacification program had braked almost to a halt after Tet and, indeed, Abrams spent most of his first few months in command trying to reinvigorate MACVs nonmilitary and development programs. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. History might have been very different if tragedy hadnt intervened that June at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. In truth, the campaign ebbed and flowed throughout much of 1968, as evidenced by the mounting casualties on all sides. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Never before had the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong suffered such casualties. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Strategy may be aspirational, but it must be more than just wishful thinking. North Vietnamese units in Cho Lon, a historically Chinese district west of Saigon, were blasted out in prolonged fighting that demolished large portions of the area. The shocking images coming out of Vietnam vividly showed the horrors of the war, and many were shocked by the enemy's resilience. For Le Duan, the Hanoi Politburos first secretary, a major battlefield success in 1968 promised a great deal. In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination and ran a close second in the New Hampshire primary. The stories and pictures contradicted Johnson administration reports that victory was within Americas grasp. In addition to more than 2,800 bodies, another 3,000 residents were missing, and the occupying forces had destroyed many of the citys grand temples, palaces and other monuments. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker focused on the tactical battle ranging around Khe Sanh at the expense of other military and political crises wrought by the enemy offensive are misplaced. In a particularly bold attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, a Viet Cong platoon got inside the complexs courtyard before U.S. forces destroyed it. He has said the C.I.A. Tet, for many, crystallized the wars costsmoral, strategic, in lives lost, dollars wasted. Tet was certainly a pivotal moment in changing American attitudes towards the Vietnam war. Certainly, reporters asked tough questions in Tets aftermath. But in the eyes of millions of Americans, one thing seemed likely: It was only a matter of time before the United States, a global superpower with vastly superior military might, would prevail. As a result, he conducted the war in a way that provided as little information as possible, which only increased the shock of Tet. Location: Vietnam Participants: United States Viet Cong Context: Vietnam War Lunar New Year Key People: Nguyen Van Thieu Dean Rusk William Westmoreland Creighton Williams Abrams, Jr. See all related content See how the North Vietnamese-backed Viet Cong launched surprise attacks across South Vietnam See all videos for this article It increased the American public's dissatisfaction with the war, leading . Many South Vietnamese troops were on holiday when the attacks began, and the military was caught off guard. Many among the rural population remained committed to the communist cause. Westmoreland was replaced by Gen. Creighton Abrams, who aggressively pursued the Vietnamization program and oversaw the reduction of the U.S. presence in Vietnam to fewer than 30,000 troops. The American people were never involved, Zortheon says. Sharp not incidentally, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 1964 to 1968 pilloried the handwringers who had taken center stage and the anti-war elements who were in full cry. And, more recently, one popular editorial writer, James Robbins, has suggested a more basic, American-centric point: We lost the Vietnam War by choice., A better reading of the 1968 Tet offensive, especially for civilian policymakers and military strategists, would include a more thoughtful dissection of what we expect to accomplish through war, how we understand the mechanism through which violence is meant to effect political change, and why our unblemished faith in the general political efficacy of force persists. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. But President Lyndon B. Johnson and other leaders, taking note of growing antiwar sentiment at home, chose to do the opposite. One marine, for example, damned the left-wing activists with their emphasis on liberal arts studies and their upper-class patronage. Retired Adm. U.S.G. The Tet Offensive was a series of surprise attacks by the Vietcong (rebel forces sponsored by North Vietnam) and North Vietnamese forces, on scores of cities, towns, and hamlets throughout South Vietnam. While the attack on the U.S. embassy garnered much media attention in Tets early days, fighting engulfed numerous rural provinces and urban towns across South Vietnam.

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