Talk:Tet Offensive

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Untitled Archive 1 (thru May 2006) Archive 2 (thru September 2007) Archive 3 (thru December 2010)

NLF

What does the "NLF" acronym stand for? Not explained in article, nor here. Does it represent a French-language term?
--Atikokan (talk) 03:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

One author wrote the following: 1959 . . . was the year that Ho Chi Minh declared a People’s War to unite all of Vietnam, which led to the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), of which the Viet Cong constituted its (guerilla) army. Source: A. T. Lawrence, Crucible Vietnam: Memoir of an Infantry Lieutenant (2009 ed.). McFarland. ISBN 0786445173, p. 20.99.147.149.27 (talk) 00:44, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Although I don't there is any question that "Vietcong" is the WP:COMMONNAME, fans of "NLF" remain determined and persistent. Kauffner (talk) 19:52, 15 January 2011

• As the author of the vast majority of this article I find it very interesting that the intro now fails to even mention the organization which carried out most of the offensive and suffered the majority of the casualties on the communist side. PAVN was not the parent body of the NLF's armed forces (both were subservient to the Party's Military Committee). Oh well, typical of Wiki, where historical accuracy is denuded in the name of the lowest common denominator.74.177.109.240 (talk) 05:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

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• • Nonetheless, according to the Vietnamese official history of their armed forces, the NLF was a part of the PAVN, and both, of course, were under the command of the Vietnamese executive, as in any country of the world. I believe some credit have to be given to that point of view (Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, translated by Merle L. Pribbenow. University Press of Kansas, 2002. p. 68. ISBN 0-7006-1175-4). The refusal to acknowledge the "insurgents" in South Vietnam as part of a regular army, which would concede that the NLF had local support is, to my unprofessional point of view, one of the many instances of a one sided view in the article, which is natural to some degree in the English Wikipedia, dominated by English native speakers. For example, the PAVN is repeatedly (to the point of being irritating) called communist forces while the US army is never referred as capitalist forces. Given the implications of the word "communist" in the English speaking world, is hard to fathom the intentions of the writer (if the writer even realize what he's doing). There are few efforts to name the PAVN units that fought the battle, they are merely referred by estimates of their numbers, as appeared in the US military press releases of the epoch. There are few opinions about the thoughts of the Vietnamese commanders, and some are qualified with pejorative adjectives, while the article abounds in thoughts of US commanders taken from what appears to be US press articles, dutifully echoed by US historians. There are what seems to be excuses given for the most blatant war crimes. Thus, the NLF tagging as extraneous to the PANV is just the tip of an iceberg that points to a few weaknesses in an article that apparently lacks enough input from the Vietnamese or Chinese version of the events. Moreover, the article references heavily only one book, as noted in the tags at the header of this discussion page. I first tried to give here the reasons I have to be suspicious of many articles where US forces are involved, where is hard to distinguish the US official narrative from the Wikipedia version, but in the end I erased my rant and added the Globalize tag, in hopes of new input. In spite of this opinion, I'm deeply thankful for the general quality of the article, which I've read many times (with deep joy) as it has grown over time, specially because of, what seems to me, the pivotal role in Southern Asia history (and perhaps World history of colonization) played by this battle. It marked, perhaps, the high tide of Western intervention in Asia, but this analysis does not belong here (or does it?). So, many thanks, sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, to Mr. 74.177.109.240, in hopes that his Vietnamese and Chinese colleagues join him in his marvelous and appreciated effort. I'm not sarcastic here, merely pointing that each one of us has a culture at the root of our opinions and that in history it takes many generations to reach a perspective. I just hope that the facts are not lost for future historians, for them to be able to develop it in a proper way. --Ciroa (talk) 12:53, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Tet Offensive – First three paragraphs of the Introduction require corrections

The introduction states, in part, as follows: “The operations are referred to as the Tet Offensive because they began during the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, Tết Nguyên Đán, the first day of the year on a traditional lunar calendar and the most important Vietnamese holiday. Both North and South Vietnam announced on national radio broadcasts that there would be a two-day cease-fire during the holiday. In Vietnamese, the offensive is called Cuộc Tổng tiến công và nổi dậy ("General Offensive and Uprising"), or Tết Mậu Thân (Tet, year of the monkey).” This is not correct. The first day of the Vietnamese New Year in 1968 was the 30th of January and not the 31st. Consequently, wherever you write 31 January in the Introduction, you should replace it with 30 January. If you look down the article at the first two paragraphs under the section titled, Offensive, you can see that portion was handled correctly. Additionally the 3rd paragraph of the introduction reads, in part, “five of the six autonomous cities, . . , and the southern capital.” This is not correct. Saigon, Dalat, Hué, Da Nang, Cam Ranh, and Vung Tau were the six autonomous cities, so you should more correctly say, “five of the six autonomous cities (including the southern capital).” All of these Introduction issues were discussed extensively in Archive 3 along with verifiable sources.72.197.86.130 (talk) 17:48, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Aftermath -- United States – 2nd paragraph requires correction

The 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence reads as follows: “As a result of the heavy fighting, 1968 went on to become the deadliest year of the war for the US forces with 16,592 soldiers killed. This is not correct. There were a total of 16,899 American deaths (hostile and non-hostile) in Vietnam during 1968. Hostile deaths included 13,005 killed in action, 1,630 died of wounds, 272 missing in action/declared dead, and 23 captured/declared dead. An additional 1,969 Americans suffered non-hostile deaths, which included illness, accidents, missing/presumed dead, and even homicides. This issue was discussed extensively in Archive 3 along with verifiable sources.72.197.86.130 (talk) 17:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Tet Offensive

This article should be reviewed by Wikipedia's military history team for internal inconsistencies and biases, for incomplete discussion of subject matter, repetitiveness, and for possible biases in source matter that are not adequately noted or discussed in the article. It also appears to lack footnotes references for some crucial and possibly questionable statements.

Some specific problems as examples:

The section "Order of Battle and Communist Capabilities" includes neither a presentation of the order of battle for Communist forces or for allied forces. Rather it is largely a discussion of internal debate among U.S. military commanders and intelligence officials and within the Johnson Administration. "Order of Battle" means something specific, and this section is not one.

The section which follows, "Success of the Offensive", is entirely a discussion of U.S. domestic and political issues related to the war during 1967 and previously. It does not cover any aspect of the Offensive in 1968.

Next comes "Northern decisions", sub text "Party politics" which contains such statements as "Planning in Hanoi for a winter-spring offensive during 1968 had begun in early 1967 and continued until early the following year" which cannot possibly be true since the Offensive itself began in "early 1968", and the detailed planning and training for the offensive, including infiltration of additional troops from the North, such as staging of the assault forces, and stockpiling of supplies, had to be completed in late 1967 - a decision to move forward with this extensive effort can only have been made many months beforehand. This, in fact, is hinted at in the following section, only one of many contradictions in the article. The section entitled "General Offensive and Uprising" then makes the claim that the decisions were not finalized until October and December, 1967, which would have been too late for the North Vietnamese to position troops and supplies to carry out the offensive.

The section entitled "Saigon" begins with the internally contradictory statement: "Although Saigon was the focal point of the offensive, the communists did not seek a total takeover of the city" - when it is generally accepted that 1) the aim was to occupy and hold all of the cities and towns which were attacked, not parts of cities (which would have been extremely difficult), nor merely one or another of them; 2) the NVA made a particularly concerted effort to capture the two northernmost provinces of the Republic of Vietnam and to set up revolutionary governments there, and that was clearly a primary North Vietnamese goal, as it was again in the Easter Offensive in 1972; and 3) the most concerted effort and the one that came closest to success was at Hue, not Saigon.

There are many other problems with the article, including a disorganized approach and sloppiness in presentation. My guess is that this is more a result of too many editors with too many different view points, some of them political in nature, but whatever the reason, the result is a confusing article that may contain errors or unsupported opinion or ideological viewpoint. I don't have the time or background to deal with any of this easily, but there are many solid professional and amateur historians who edit Wikipedia articles, and perhaps a careful reviews by a small group could come up with an approach to edit the article into something more scholarly.Sciacchitano (talk) 04:58, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Sciacchitano, I renamed the section to more accurately represent the discussion. It may be reverted, however. I think you correct, though. This article needs a lot of work. --Korentop (talk) 10:53, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Term: communist

Someone already mentioned it. What is it with the constant use of the terms "communist(s)" or "communist forces" for North Vietnamese troops and the Viet Cong? In my opinion it is not well chosen in this topic, because it is generalizing and also inculdes a subtile message/opinion. The exaggerated use, if not the mere use of this term at all sounds absolutely stupid and non-scientific. One could think that the "communists" of communists from all over the world. If I would use this term in this way in a scientific essay, it would be marked as non-scientific. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.69.216.187 (talk) 10:54, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

The advantage of this term is that is that it avoids the suggestion that northern and southern communists were separate militarily. I think it is clear from the memoirs of Tran Van Tra and others that this was not in fact the case. In Vietnamese historical literature, they don't make this distinction. The communist soldiers are all designated PAVN, regardless of whether they were northerners or southerners. If there is some military operation during which northerners did one thing, while southerners did something else, then a distinction is relevant. But just to replace "communist" with "PAVN/NLF" or something similar creates the misleading idea of two forces that have been combined. Kauffner (talk) 12:03, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

RfC on Vietnamese diacritics

RfC: Should the spelling of Vietnamese names follow the general usage of English-language reliable sources? Examples: Ngo Dinh Diem, Ho Chi Minh, and Saigon, or Ngô Đình Diệm, Hồ Chí Minh, and Sài Gòn. The RfC is here. Kauffner (talk) 21:27, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Tone

I see a lot of colloquialisms and other kinds of unencyclopedic language in this article. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:36, 3 August 2012 (UTC)