why was the tet offensive important

The Tet Offensive was an American military victory, says Prince. And the story broke that Westmorland wanted 200,000 more troops. We could just be there year after year after year, sacrificing 10,000 American boys a year, and it just didn't add up.. 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. Soon after, General William Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander who had overseen the war since 1964, declared to the American people that the conflicts end was in sight. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. To distract attention from their preparations and attract U.S. forces away from the large cities, the communists launched diversionary attacks in October 1967 against the important but isolated town of Dak To in the . Tet Offensive - U-S-History.com 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.. Westmorelands intelligence chief later noted Khe Sanhs deceptive similarity to Dien Bien Phu, the French garrison overrun at the close of the French-Indochina War. The attacks jolted a nation largely oblivioustothe bloody events taking place in a tiny, faraway Asian country. HISTORIC ARTICLE Jan 30, 1968 CE: Tet Offensive On January 30, 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops launched the Tet Offensive against South Vietnamese and United States targets. Why? 1968 Events - HISTORY If the United States let communists grab control of South Vietnam, official doctrine held, the rest of Southeast Asia would fall with domino-like precision. Id push them down here and theyd pop up there, and Id go home at night and be uneasy and disturbed and then we'd start again the next day and wed grind through this business.. Though peace talks would drag on for another five yearsduring which more American soldiers were killed than in the previous years of the conflictJohnsons decision to halt escalation after the Tet Offensive marked a crucial turning point in American participation in the war in Vietnam. Such faulty assumptions reinforced yet another myth emanating from the ashes of Tet. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was called before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and questioned for 11 hours. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. Public support for his handling of the war crateredand with it, his hopes for a second term. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. The most important reason why the USA withdrew from Vietnam was the Tet The Tet Offensive became a major turning point in the Vietnam War. Sixty-six percent of registered voters think Biden is too old to be president and 59 percent have doubts about his mental fitness, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll conducted last week. On February 27, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, a pillar of respectability and hardly an antiwar radical, solemnly informed millions of viewers that after his recent visit to the battlefields of Vietnam, it was unclear who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities. But, he added, It seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate., The medias coverage of Tet overallhonest, fair-minded, unflinchingshaped Americans evolving views that the Vietnam War simply couldnt be won by any conventional military standard. On the American side, this realization led to a purposeful campaign by the Johnson White House to publicize wartime progress. Militarily it was a defeat for the communists. Every day, the reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you relevant, fact-based and human-centered news from across the globe. For example, in a November 1967 speech to the National Press Club, Westmoreland pronounced We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.. Yet Abramss imagined accomplishments hardly held up to reality, even if they assuaged veterans seeking answers in a lost cause narrative after Saigons fall in 1975. There are also good reasons to wish for it which is why I find myself in the weird position of cheering a candidate whose politics I detest and whose grip on reality I question. To these officers, they had destroyed the insurgency during Tet indeed, they had not and were on the cusp of final victory before the home front lost its will. 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_________ On yet another level, assumptions on what U.S. power could achieve in Southeast Asia fell short in Tets wake. 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. Theres a second, more powerful message implicit in Kennedys candidacy: a profound undercurrent of discontent with a party that is losing touch with its once-powerful, even dominant, populist roots. Seriously, Not Literally, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/robert-kennedy-democrat-president-2024.html, the C.I.A. 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. At its core, the 1968 Tet offensive, from all sides, remains a profound case study on misplaced expectations about how war unfolds and what it promises. Was the ongoing fighting in Vietnam actually weakening the United States, both at home and abroad? He has said the C.I.A. 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. Updated: February 22, 2019 | Original: January 25, 2018. Without question, Saigons government continued to wrestle with lasting social and political tensions. His long-held anti-vaccine views sit poorly with most Democrats. The campaign initially targeted more than 100 cities and towns, including thestrategicsoutherncapitalof Saigon, now named Ho Chi Minh City.The Tet Offensive was acatastrophicmilitary failure for the communists. North Vietnam - Why the USA lost the war in Vietnam - BBC National Security Program Program on Teaching Military History Home / Articles / Tet 1968: The Turning Point The Tet Offensive of 1968 proved to be the turning point of the Vietnam War and its effects were far-reaching. Among them was Clark Clifford, the new secretary of defense who had replaced Robert S. McNamara while the Tet fighting raged on. Giap, in coordination with North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, believed that the attacks would cause Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces to collapse and foment discontent and rebellion among the South Vietnamese population. 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams captured the summary execution of a suspected Viet Cong officer by South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan on the streets of Saigon, and his photo would bring the brutality of the war to the front page of newspapers around the world. Hue's losses were costly off the battlefield, too. As one Washington official put it, troubled confusion and uncertainty now reigned in the capital. Later that year, Republican presidential hopeful Richard Nixon vowed to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam, running as a hawk yet mindful of the growing clamor to draw down U.S. forces from Indochina. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Suggestions that he and, to a lesser extent, U.S. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. On March 31, 1968, eight weeks after the shock of Tet, Lyndon Johnson, in a reckoning of his own, administered an aftershock. Not only would the Allies be unprepared, but holiday travelers would provide good cover for the Viet Cong to make their move. Though tactically unsuccessful, the Tet Offensive shattered American optimism about the progress of the war and convinced many that it was unwinnable. And that changed everything. Despite its heavy casualty toll, and its failure to inspire widespread rebellion among the South Vietnamese, the Tet Offensive proved to be a strategic success for the North Vietnamese. Yet the journalistic response to Tet, in truth, proved far more measured than generally has been accepted. 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. 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? The Battle of Hue was part of the Tet Offensive. Facebook, A version of this article appears in print on, Take Bobby Kennedy Jr. history chapter 20 Flashcards | Quizlet In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination and ran a close second in the New Hampshire primary. 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. 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. It allowed him to exploit American advantages in firepower away from populated areas, while hopefully limiting the enemys access to the people. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. North Vietnamese leaders believed they could not sustain the heavy . With the Tet holiday nearing, Hanoi similarly saw what it wanted to see when it looked southward. In early 1968, however, the North Vietnamese military commander General Vo Nguyen Giap chose January 31 as the occasion for a coordinated offensive of surprise attacks aimed at breaking the stalemate in Vietnam. The offensive failed but has been viewed as a turning point. In Saigon, attackers penetrated both the presidential palace and the compound of the U.S. embassy. By the time of the Tet Offensive, the president had concluded that only sustained bombing and a stepped-up ground war could get the North Vietnamese to the conference table. Make your tax-deductible gift today to support The Worlds independent, human-centered journalism. Meanwhile, the Defense Department fed the public artificial, often inflated tallies of weekly enemy casualties. The episode has attained near mythical status as the turning point of Americas long war in Vietnam. After moving troops and supplies into South Vietnam, he launched a diversionary attack against the American base at Khe Sanh on 21 January 1968. After Tet, however, U.S. troops' numbers and public support started to erode. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion, he said on his broadcast. Here are some tips. Their forces were beaten back across the country with high casualties. Veterans like Harry G. Summers argued in an influential work that Tet was a resounding failure for the North Vietnamese, yet a strategic success against American public opinion and political leadership. Danish folk high schools offer lessons in peace in times of war, Wagners mutiny punctured Putins strongman image and exposed cracks in his rule, Denmark welcomes Ukrainians under special law with an expiration date. All Rights Reserved. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. For the North Vietnamese government, the best result would be a galvanizing of discontent in the South that would, in turn, force the collapse of the government and army of South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu. By December 1967 there were indications to U.S. military commanders in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were preparing for a major military campaign. Americans watched the Tet Offensive unfold in real time. While American and South Vietnamese troops were caught off-guard by the attacks, they were able to quickly retake most territory the enemy captured, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, where the Viet Cong had managed to breach the outer walls. In late January, beginning on the most sacred of Vietnamese holidays, communist forces launched a sweeping assault across the breadth of South Vietnam. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. In 1968, the Vietcong used the cover of the Vietnamese New Year (known as Tet) celebrations to change tactics and launch a massive attack on US-held areas across South Vietnam, . Clifford finally put the matter to the Joint Chiefs directly and came away dismayed by their response. Could a similar scenario (minus any violence) unfold again, with President Biden in the role of L.B.J., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the role of McCarthy, and a more credible Democrat than Kennedy in the role of his dad, ultimately winning the nomination? This Ukrainian woman rescued dogs as she fled war. 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. In a speech four months before the surprise Tet attacks, LBJ claimed steady and even dramatic progress from when he first sent substantial numbers of troops there in 1965. The Tet Offensive was a big deal because it marked the peak of U.S. involvement in the war. What exactly had happened and what it meant tooksome time to sort out. PRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402. January 29, 2018 Commentary For Le Duan, the Hanoi Politburo's first secretary, a major battlefield success in 1968 promised a great deal. The Tet Offensive was important because it led to the United States recognizing that it could not militarily win the war. Many Democrats may have quietly wanted Biden to step aside instead of run. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong paid dearly for their deviation from the guerrilla warfare strategy that had so frustrated U.S. commanders. Tet Offensive. Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. Upon his return, "the most trusted man in America, as he was then called, had a grim report for the nation. Liberals have come to like Biden more during his presidency, whereas they came to like Johnson a lot less. All Rights Reserved. It increased the American public's dissatisfaction with the war, leading . Strategy may be aspirational, but it must be more than just wishful thinking. 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 the coordination of such an ambitious nationwide offensive misfired and some units attacked a day early, providing MACV with a crucial warning of the impending assault. 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 1968 Tet Offensive is widely regarded as the most significant event which occurred during the Vietnam War and a major turning point. Westmoreland pushed South Vietnamese forces into the countryside to regain lost territory while U.S. troops sought to isolate and grind down enemy main force units. Tet Offensive | Facts, Casualties, Videos, & Significance The South Vietnamese uprising they had hoped to spark did not materialize. You cannot download interactives. Antiwar candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy fell just a few hundred votes shy of defeating the sitting president in the New Hampshire Democratic primary in early March. A decisive military victory would lead to unification and true Vietnamese independence. To cause South Vietnamese troops to collapse and its communities to turn against Saigon's leaders. That feeling of just the quagmire, that there was no end to it.. Turns out, the US had made one miscalculation after another. The Tet Offensive: What Were They Thinking? - JSTOR Daily 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. All that was clear at the time was that something startling had occurred and that the US was up against a much more formidable opponent than most Americans had previously believed. Washington also underestimated the enemys capacity for conducting a war on multiple fronts. Many Americans began to question military and political leaders who assured them the Vietnam War would be won soon. The spirit of rebellion in America today now rests mainly on the Republican side. John Chancellor, who covered the White House for NBC News and would later anchor its nightly broadcast for a dozen years, believes Johnson would not have been forced into the unhappy decision not to run again if the country had been better prepared, if the country had understood what he was doing in Vietnam., The one great disadvantage Lyndon Johnson had in running this country is that the people didn't quite trust him, Chancellor says. Troop limitations were announced, and there was a halt on bombings. 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. The dramatic developments set in train during Tet led eventually to the withdrawal of American forces and the collapse of South Vietnam. 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. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region. Here again, faulty assumptions drove the argument. Tet was a historical anomaly: a battlefield defeat that . Explanation: In 1968 the Vietcong launched an organized series of attacks on South Vietnam. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Support The World's nuanced international coverage. To drive a wedge between U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. 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. I don't anticipate that we will hit them so hard that they'll be knocked out.. Certainly, reporters asked tough questions in Tets aftermath. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.Jan 30, 1968 CE: Tet Offensive. Nonetheless, they wouldnt fold. If you have questions about licensing content on this page, please contact ngimagecollection@natgeo.com for more information and to obtain a license. Sixty-three percent think the economy is on the wrong track. Thirty-three percent of voters cite inflation as their chief concern; only 19 percent cite guns and 11 percent womens rights. A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules takes off from Khe Sanh, Vietnam, in 1968. Many among the rural population remained committed to the communist cause. The Tet Offensive was an operation launched by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) in South Vietnam in late January 1968. Barry Zorthian believes LBJ never felt he had the confidence of the American public. The U.S. military, however, had grown more optimistic following the Tet Offensive. Then came Tet, a turning point in public opinion about the war, and a political disaster for PresidentLyndon Johnson's administration. The South Vietnamese government reported that 7,721 civilians were killed in the fighting during the offensive, while an additional 18,516 were wounded. How the Tet Offensive Undermined American Faith in Government Further reason: We arent living in 1968, or even 1967. As with Trump in 2015, the media is treating his message literally, but not seriously, to borrow the political reporter Salena Zitos important insight. Some may know the Tet Offensive had something to do with Vietnam, but that's about it. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Saigon was hardly the lifeless puppet that communist propagandists painted it to be. There are good reasons to doubt it. The Tet Offensive was a big deal because it marked the peak of U.S. involvement in the war. In typical fashion, Johnson lashed out at the press, telling a reporter that the press islying like drunken sailors every day. De-escalation began. Essentially, the Tet Offensive was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. The shock of Tet was just enormous, says Barry Zorthian, who was in charge of press relations for the US Military Command in Saigon. The Tet Offensive - Alpha History The ultimate goal of the offensive was the destruction of the South Vietnamese government and military through a popular revolt as well as the eventual withdrawal of American forces. It would compel the United States to withdraw its troops. Never before had the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong suffered such casualties.
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