Tet Offensive

Tet Offensive
Part of the Vietnam War
File:Captain Franklin P. Eller during TET NAM.jpg USMC Captain Franklin P. Eller during the Tet Offensive.
Date January 30, 1968 - June 8, 1968 Location South Vietnam Result ARVN and U.S. military victory, Communist psychological victory
Belligerents
Republic of Vietnam, United States of America, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia	National Liberation Front, Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Commanders and leaders
William Westmoreland	Võ Nguyên Giáp
Strength
50,000+ (estimate)	85,000+ (estimate)
Casualties and losses
2,788 KIA, 8,299 WIA, 587 MIA 1,536 KIA, 7,764 WIA, 11 MIA Total: 4,324 KIA, 16,063 WIA, 598 MIA	25,000-45,000 KIA (estimate), unknown number of wounded

The Tet Offensive (January 30, 1968 - June 8, 1968) was a series of operational offensives by the Việt Cộng and the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War.

The operations are called the Tet Offensive as they were timed to begin on the night of January 30–31, 1968, Tết Nguyên Đán (the lunar new year day). The offensive began spectacularly during celebrations of the Lunar New Year and lasted about two months, although some sporadic operations associated with the offensive continued into 1969.

The Tet Offensive is widely seen as the turning point of the war.

Summary

The Tet offensive was a country-wide coordinated surprise attack by the NVA and VC on more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 provincial capitals and Saigon. The attack, at the time, was the largest battle of the war. The VC and NVA struck nearly simultaneously, during the most sacred Vietnamese holiday while many ARVN troops were on leave. Initially the attacks took the South Vietnamese and Americans by surprise, but they were beaten back by the ARVN and the Americans, inflicting massive casualties on the Viet Cong.

The offensive included attacks on the city of Hue, where intense fighting lasted a month, at the U.S. base at Khe Sanh, where fighting continued for two months, and the raid on the U.S Embassy in Saigon, which was repulsed within a few hours.

Goals and results

According to General Vo Nguyen Giap, the communist north's goals were not purely military but political and diplomatic as well, to take advantage of public opposition to the war in the United States and the weakness of the Saigon Government. Giap sought to accomplish the following:

- Create a general uprising among the South Vietnamese against the Saigon government, leading to the formation of a coalition government and the departure of the United States.

- Demonstrate that American claims regarding progress in the war were wrong and to apply pressure upon the U.S. government.

- Bring the war to the cities of South Vietnam to relieve military pressure on the countryside. (Schmitz 90)

The first and most, their largest goal was to paaarty. was a failure for the communists. While there was little support for the Saigon government, there was no general uprising and the communists, most with no plans for retreat or withdrawal, took heavy losses. While fighting in Hue and Saigon continued for some time in most cites, the communists were driven back in just days.

The effort to regain control of the countryside was more successful. According to the U.S. State Department the Viet Cong "expanded their control in urban areas and have made pacification virtually inoperative. In the Mekong Delta the NLF was stronger now then ever and in other regions the countryside belongs to the VC" (Schmitz 106),

The attacks created a crisis in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, which was unable to convince the American people that the Tet Offensive was a major defeat for the communists. According to Colonel Thomas Hammes, the U.S. government "had squandered its credibility with the press and, through them, with the U.S. public." According to a March 25 Harris poll, 60 percent of Americans “regarded the Tet Offensive as a defeat for U.S. objectives in Vietnam (Henkin)

The offensive had profound psychological impact on the Johnson administration, elite decision makers, and the media. According to Peter Braestrup, Tet “affected political Washington far more than it did the general public.

At the end of March, in the wake of Tet, the Johnson administration began a reevaluation of its war policy. On the advice the so-called Wise men the Johnson Administration made major changes to it Vietnam War policy. These changes included limiting the bombing campaign in North Vietnam, reversing the escalation of American troops, capping levels at 550,000. The Johnson administration also began to turn over responsibility of the fighting to the South Vietnam and sought negotiations with Hanoi.

Strategic context

The strategy of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam was based on the Maoist theory of people's war. This theory divides warfare into three phases. In the first phase, the guerrillas gain the support of the population through the distribution of propaganda and attacks on the machinery of government. In the second phase, escalating attacks are made on the government's military and vital institutions. In the third phase, conventional fighting is used to seize cities, overthrow the government, and take control of the country. Under military leader and theorist Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap's "Peoples War, Peoples Army" closely follows the Maoist three-stage approach, but with greater emphasis on flexible shifting between mobile and guerrilla warfare, and opportunities for a spontaneous "General Uprising" of the masses in conjunction with guerrilla forces. (The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century by Thomas X. Hammes page 52) Mao summed up the essence of this stategy as: enemy advances,we withdraw - enemy rests, we harass - enemy tires, we attack,- enemy withdraws, we pursue. (Hammes page 46)

On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines became the first American combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 U.S. military advisors already in place, and four days later President Johnson announced the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam would be increased from 75,000 to 125,000. The involvement of U.S. ground forces did not greatly change the strategy of the communists. The communists did however make major changes in tactics to cope with the United States large advantage in mobility and firepower. Shifting between the three phases as circumstances dictated, the conflict turned into small-unit battles between regular army units on both sides. While artillery and air-power inflicted losses on the Viet Cong, these losses were made up with replacements from North Vietnam. According to the National Security Council ,in 1967 three fourth of the battles in South Vietnam were at the communists choice of time, place type and duration. The CIA reported that "less then one percent of nearly two million Allied small unit operations resulted in contact with the VC. (Schmitz p 48)

The fighting in Vietnam in 1966 was described by war corespondent Moshe Dayan, according to Martin van Creveld as: “[Its] battle procedures operated like an assembly belt. First came the shelling of the landing zones by ground artillery. Then came aerial bombardment. And the landings themselves were covered by ‘gunships,’ [i.e., armed helicopters] firing their rockets and machine guns almost at our feet.” It was an amazing operation, “but where was the war?... Where were the Viet Cong? And where was the battle?” The Blemish of Conquest

From 1965 to 1967 involved an ever greater commitment of forces in the name of stabilizing the situation in Vietnam. The war was fought with two goals, to weaken the insurgency in the countryside and a battle of attrition, to inflict heavier casualties on the Vietcong and North Vietnamese than could be replaced. The military measured the success of the battle on "body counts", number of weapons seized and bombing targets destroyed as a metric for progress in the destruction of the insurgency. US strategy for dealing with North Vietnam was to use bombing to pressure the country out of the conflict and to draw the North Vietnamese into unequal conventional battles such as the Battle of Khe Sanh.

General Westmoreland and other high level commanders sought to weaken the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese to the point that the ARVN could fight unassisted. By the spring 1967 Westmoreland believed that the "crossover point" had been reached, that is that the VC and NVA were only able to maintain but not increase the size of the forces in South Vietnam. The CIA analyst in May 1967 however stated that "the Vietnamese Communists have continued to expand their Main Forces, both by infiltration and by local recruitment." (In Retrospect T. McNamara) Unbeknownst to the leaders in the south, there was a growing body of politicians in the north that shared these views and called for dialogue to end the war. This resulted in a massive purge, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of over 200 North Vietnamese officials. The US bombing campaign over North Vietnam had allowed the more extreme elements of the government to both whip up patriotic feeling and to crush any dissent within the ruling party.

The plan

The plan for the Tet Offensive originated in 1967, following the death of North Vietnamese General Nguyen Chi Thanh. The primary strategist was Thanh's successor, General Vo Nguyen Giap, although Giap claimed afterward to have been against the idea, planning it "reluctantly under duress from the Le Duan dominated Politburo." Giap had long advocated primarily using guerrilla tactics against the U.S. and South Vietnam, whereas Thanh had supported general main force action. Overriding Giap, the North Vietnamese leadership decided that the time was ripe for a major conventional offensive. They believed that the South Vietnamese government and the U.S. presence were so unpopular in the South that a broad-based attack would spark a spontaneous uprising of the South Vietnamese population, which would enable the North to sweep to a quick, decisive victory.

To this end, a multiphase plan was developed: in the first phase, the PAVN would launch attacks in the border regions of South Vietnam to close those regions to observation, conceal troop movements and distract the enemy. Following this, a second phase of widely dispersed attacks by the Viet Cong directly into the major centers of the country would cause the collapse of the government and would prod the civilians into full-fledged revolt, and with the government overthrown, the Americans and other allied forces would have no choice but to evacuate, leading to phase three attacks by the Viet Cong and PAVN against elements of the isolated foreign forces.

The offensive involved simultaneous military action in most of the larger cities in South Vietnam and attacks on major U.S. bases, with particular efforts focused on the cities of Saigon and Hue. Concurrently, a substantial assault was launched against the U.S. firebase at Khe Sanh. The Khe Sanh assault drew North Vietnamese forces away from the offensive into the cities, but North Vietnam considered the attack necessary to protect their supply lines and divert American attention.

ARVN and U.S. readiness

In the days immediately preceding the Offensive, the preparedness of both the ARVN and the U.S. military were relatively relaxed. North Vietnam had announced in October that it would observe a seven-day truce from January 27 to February 3, 1968, in honor of the Tet holiday, and the South Vietnamese army made plans to allow recreational leave for a large part of its force. Westmoreland requested that the South Vietnamese cancel the upcoming cease-fire and issued an warning to U.S. forces "Troops will be placed on maximum alert...." (James Arnold)However that alert either came too late or was ignored.

U.S. and ARVN military intelligence observed signs of a major military buildup in the months before the Offensive. In addition to captured intelligence, observations of logistics operations were also quite clear: In October the number of trucks observed heading south on the Hồ Chí Minh Trail jumped from the previous monthly average of 480 to 1,116. In November this number was 3,823 and in December, 6,315.

U.S. attention was firmly focused on the ongoing battle at Khe Sanh, and concluded it was the target of this buildup. U.S. intelligence identified at least 15,000 PAVN troops in the vicinity, and Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) staff was certain that a decisive clash was imminent, but thought it would be directed solely against Khe Sanh.

General Westmoreland warned President Johnson of the possibility of a major offensive, probably against Khe Sanh, and considered analogous to the famed Vietnamese attacks at Điện Biên Phủ in the 1950s, which had preceded scheduled negotiations as a means of improving the Communist bargaining position. While military intelligence saw that offensive operations were being planned, it did not detect that the offensive would be national in scale and aimed at cities.

Lieutenant General Weyand, suspected a build-up and asked Westmoreland to shift forces closer to Saigon. When the Offensive began 27 maneuver battalions were available for the defense of Saigon.

Order of Battle Controversy

Prior to the Tet Offensive there was disagreement between MACV's and the CIA's Order of Battle estimates of the strength of guerrilla forces in South Vietnam. While members of the intelligence community believed that VC numbers in South Vietnam could be as high a 500,000 or more, MACV held that the number could be no more then 300,000. MACV's numbers may have been lower because of political pressure to show progress in the war. Just prior to the Tet Offensive MACV refused to accept higher estimates because it would undermine claims that a crossover point had been reached. Gen Westmoreland and other were under pressure from the Johnson administration to show progress in the war to shore up declining public support in the United States. However as the Tet Offensive approached more and more officials, both inside outside the military became increasing uneasy. In September 1967 the CIA's George Carver, under intense political pressure relented and accepted MACV's lower numbers CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence

Specific operations

Map of South Vietnam showing some of the major targets of the Tet Offensive. Also shown is Khe Sanh, where the attack predated Tet.

The first battles of the Tet Offensive, according to some war historians, were the battles at Loc Ninh, on Oct 29th, Dak To on Nov 23rd, and the build up at Khe Sanh in January. These attacks may have been designed to draw U.S. units out of urban areas towards the northern borders. They may also have served the purpose of training the VC in urban warefare (Arnold) The Tet Offensive was coordinated between battalion strength elements of the National Liberation Front's People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF or Viet Cong) and divisional strength elements of North Vietnam's People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), against South Vietnam's Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and United States military and other ARVN-allied forces. Fighting began in the south on January 29 as a number of Viet Cong units attacked prematurely in four provincial towns. The rest of the NLF/PAVN attacks began on the night of January 30. All but eight provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, and 58 other major towns were attacked, with major attacks aimed at Ban Me Thuot, Quảng Nam province, Đà Lạt, Mỹ Tho, Cần Thơ, Bến Tre province, Nha Trang, and Kontum. It was in Huế, the ancient capital, and Saigon that the Communist forces had significant success.

Khe Sanh

Main article: Battle of Khe Sanh

Khe Sanh was an airstrip and U.S. Marine base just south of the DMZ. According to North Vietnam leadership, the attack on Khe Sanh, which began on January 21, was intended to serve two purposes: As a diversionary tactic to draw American attention and forces away from the upcoming Tet attacks, and to prevent the forces at Khe Sanh from attacking supplies and troops moving south on the Hồ Chí Minh Trail. In turn, American military stated that the very purpose of the Khe Sanh base was to provoke the North Vietnamese into focused and prolonged battle, allowing American artillery and air strikes to inflict massive casualties.

Khe Sanh and its 6,000 men were surrounded by 3 PAVN divisions, totaling approximately 20,000 men. Throughout the battle, which lasted until April 8, the Marines were subjected to heavy artillery bombardment, combined with sporadic small-scale infantry attacks. There was never any major ground assault on the base, and the battle was largely a duel between American and PAVN gunners, combined with air strikes from the American side. American air support eventually included massive bombing by B-52s to destroy PAVN trenches and bunkers. Ground supply to the base was cut off, and airborne resupply became difficult due to enemy fire. Thanks to innovative high-speed "supply assaults" using fighter-bombers in combination with helicopters, air supply was never halted.

American media covered the battle extensively and often made pessimistic comparisons to the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where a French base had been besieged and ultimately defeated by the Vietnamese in the 1946-1954 Indochina War.

In the end, the PAVN broke off their assault, and both sides would claim that the battle had served its intended purpose. The United States estimated 8,000 PAVN dead and considerably more wounded, against 730 American lives lost and another 2,642 wounded. As with the Vietnam War in general, the loss of American lives left a much greater impression upon the American public than did a military victory that could only be measured in terms of "kill ratio." The fact that the Khe Sanh base was abandoned on June 23 of 1968, having been deemed of no further military value, inevitably encouraged this sense of futility about the battle and the overall war.

The Siege of Khe Sanh was a diversion designed to distract American attention from the impending Tet Offensive. As Stanley Karnow noted, "Westmoreland fell for the enemy ruse." On the eve of Tet, Westmoreland deployed his forces to repel an attack in the northern provinces. The commander of Khe Sanh, Major General Lowell English, called the battle "a trap ... to force you into the expenditure of absolutely unreasonable amounts of men and materiel to defend a piece of terrain that wasn't worth a damn." In post-war interviews Communist officers acknowledeged that their intent had indeed been to draw U.S. forces away from the cities.

Saigon

Main article: First Battle of Saigon

Although Saigon was the focal point of the Tet Offensive, the Communists did not seek a total takeover of the city. Rather, they had six primary targets within the city: the headquarters of the ARVN, President Thieu's office, the American Embassy, the Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the Long Binh Naval Headquarters, and the National Radio Station. A total of 35 battalions attacked these targets; many of these troops being undercover Viet Cong who lived and worked in the city.

The radio station was considered an important target by the Communists. They had brought a tape recording of Hồ Chí Minh announcing the liberation of Saigon and calling for a "General Uprising." The building was taken and held for six hours, but they were unable to broadcast as the power had been cut off as soon as the station was attacked.

By early February, the Communist high command realized that none of their military objectives were being met, and they halted any further attacks on fortified positions. Sporadic fighting continued in Saigon until March 7. Some sections of the city were left badly damaged by the combat, particularly by U.S. retaliatory air and artillery strikes. The Chinese district of Cholon suffered especially, with perhaps hundreds of civilians killed in American counterattacks.

Huế

Main articles: Battle of Hue and Massacre at Huế

The city of Huế was attacked by ten PAVN battalions and six Viet Cong battalions and almost completely overrun. Thousands of civilians believed to be potentially hostile to Communist control, including government officials, religious figures, and expatriate residents, were executed in what became known as the Massacre at Huế. The city was not recaptured by the U.S. and ARVN forces until the end of February. Due to the historical and cultural value of the city, the U.S. did not apply air and artillery strikes as widely as in other cities, at least initially. Instead, U.S. Marines of the 1st Marine Division and several Army units had to clear the city street by street and house by house; a deadly form of combat the U.S. military had hardly seen since WW II, and for which the soldiers were not trained. Over most of February, they gradually fought their way towards the Citadel, a fortified 3-square-mile section of the city, which was recaptured from PAVN troops after four days of struggle. The U.S. lost 216 men and the ARVN 384. The allies estimated the PAVN lost 8,000 in the city and in fighting in the surrounding area. Lasting 26 days, Huế was one of the longest and perhaps the bloodiest single battle of the Vietnam War. The extent of the massacre of civilians by the Communists was only realized over the following months and years, with the last mass graves being found in 1970. Approximately 2,800 bodies were found, and another 2,000 persons were missing. Some thousands of additional lives were lost from civilians being caught in the crossfire of the battle.

In the aftermath of Tet, the Communist command described the battle of Huế as "an overall success." Their unapologetic description of the massacre of civilians was "Huế was a place where reactionary [i.e., anti-communist] spirit had existed for over ten years. However, it took us only a short time to drain it to its root."

Aftermath

A Viet Cong soldier awaits interrogation following capture in the attacks on Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968.

In total, the United States estimated that 45,000 Viet Cong and PAVN soldiers were killed, though the actual figure may have been significantly lower. The USA, ARVN, and allied Australian and South Korean forces suffered 4,324 killed, 16,063 wounded, and 598 missing. (other sources give a higher estimate of about 5,000 ARVN troops killed).

Effect on the Viet Cong and North Vietnam

According to David Schmitz "The Tet Offensive demonstrated that the United States could not win a limited war of attrition in Vietnam and had to change policy. In these terms, Tet was, in fact, a defeat. (The Tet Offensive Politics, war and public policy page 165)

However to defend from the attacks on urban areas U.S and ARVN forces withdrew from the countryside allowing the communist to increase control there. According to the U.S. State Department the move into rural areas "was an integral part of the communist plan" (Schmtz). This resulted in "a bad setback for the pacification effort" according to James Arnold (Tet Offensive 1968 Turning point in Vietnam) Nevertheless,

According to Michael Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg, Inside the VC and the NVA, one-third of the men in VC units were North Vietnamese. General Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that the Tet Offensive had brought counterinsurgency programs to a halt and "that to a large extent, the VC now controlled the countryside." John Paul Vann, according to Peter Brush, "felt Westmoreland had been duped by army briefers who over-stressed enemy body counts as a measure of success. Vann wrote in March 1968 that the VC were "being given more freedom to intimidate the rural population than ever before in the past two-and-a-half years." [1] However, this change had little effect on the war, since North Vietnam had little difficulty making up the casualties inflicted by the war. The National Liberation Front (the political arm of the Viet Cong) reformed itself as the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, and took part in future peace negotiations under this name.

The Communist high command did not anticipate the psychological effect the Tet Offensive would have on America. For example, the attack on the U.S. Embassy was allocated only 19 Viet Cong soldiers, and even the expenditure of this force was considered by some VC officers to be misguided. Only after they saw how the U.S. was reacting to this attack did the Communists begin to propagandize it. The timing of the Offensive was determined by the hope that American and South Vietnamese forces would be less vigilant during the Tet holiday.

Effect on South Vietnam

The violence witnessed during the Tet Offensive had a deep psychological effect on the South Vietnamese civilians. Confidence in the government was greatly reduced, as the offensive seemed to show that even with massive American support, the government could not protect its citizens. The South Vietnamese army also suffered lowered morale, with the desertion rate increasing from 10.5 per thousand before Tet to 16.5 per thousand in July of 1968 The songwriter Trịnh Công Sơn composed the songs Bài ca dành cho những xác người (Song for the dead bodies) and Hát trên những xác người (Singing on dead bodies) as a result of the offensive while the songwriter Trầm Tử Thiêng composed Chuyện một chiếc cầu đã gãy (Story about a Broken Bridge) about the collapse of the historic Trang Tien Bridge. These songs quickly became classics.

Effect on the United States

Although US public opinion polls continued to show a majority supporting involvement in the war, this support continued to deteriorate and the nation became increasingly polarized over the war.[18] President Lyndon Johnson saw his popularity fall sharply after the Offensive, and he withdrew as a candidate for re-election in March of 1968. The Tet Offensive is frequently seen as an example of the value of media influence and popular opinion in the pursuit of military objectives. That the Communists were able to mount a major, country-wide assault at all was a blow to U.S. hopes of winning the war rapidly, and starkly called into question General Westmoreland's earlier public reports of progress in the War. Likewise, the optimistic assessments of the Johnson administration and The Pentagon came under heavy criticism and ridicule.

Seeing the complete collapse of the PAVN/Viet Cong offensive, the lopsided casualty ratio, the lack of a popular uprising in support of the attacks, and the failure of the attacking forces to gain and hold significant territorial assets, Westmoreland considered it an appropriate opportunity for a counteroffensive action. He put together a request for 206,000 additional troops to prosecute the war in the wake of the Offensive, a move that would have required mobilization of the U.S. Reserves.

While this was being deliberated, the request was leaked to the press and published across three columns of the Sunday edition of The New York Times on March 10, 1968. Then-Lieutenant Colonel Dave Palmer later wrote in Summons of the Trumpet: "Looked upon erroneously but understandably by readers as a desperate move to avert defeat, news of the request for 206,000 men confirmed the suspicions of many that the result of the Tet Offensive had not been depicted accurately by the President or his spokesmen. If the Communists had suffered such a grievous setback, why would we need to increase our forces by 40 percent?"[19]

Controversy

Results and impact of the Offensive

The Tet Offensive is widely seen as the turning point of the war. While the Offensive is often viewed as a military defeat for the communists it had profound psychological, political and economic impact on the United States.

Two main views

The impact of the Tet Offensive in the United States and on the Vietnam War remains a controversial subject. According to one view, the Tet Offensive was an overwhelming victory for the United States in which the VC and NVA were militarily crushed but was mis-reported by the media as an American defeat. The opposing major view is that the strength of VC and NVA demonstrated by the Tet offensive revealed that statements by United States senior military and Johnson administration regarding progress in the war were untrue.

Media lost the war theory

The Tet Offensive is considered a military defeat for the Communist forces by some, as neither the Viet Cong nor the North Vietnamese army achieved their tactical goals. The operational cost of the offensive was dangerously high, with the Viet Cong essentially crippled by the huge losses inflicted by South Vietnamese and other Allied forces. the Offensive is widely considered a turning point of the war in Vietnam, with the NLF and PAVN winning an enormous psychological and propaganda victory. The Viet Cong's operational forces were effectively crippled by the Offensive. Many Viet Cong who had been operating under cover in the cities of South Vietnam revealed themselves during the Offensive and were killed or captured. The organization was preserved for propaganda purposes, but in practical terms the Viet Cong were finished. Formations that were referred to as Viet Cong were in fact largely filled with North Vietnamese replacements.

According to Colonel Hammes,Tet is sometimes viewed as one of a series of victories won by the United States however the press "turned these victories into a political defeat. The argument is that Tet "should have been a victory in itself and a serious strategic setback for the communist. Further, the continued U.S. and ARVN successes against the Viet Cong and NVA should have sealed our (United States)victory rather than seen the erosion of support. Instead, according to this view, the Communist actually gained strength because of inaccurate reporting by the U.S. and international press. According to this thesis, the inaccurate reporting heavily contributed to the destruction of Americans will to fight" (Hammes 70).

Cited in support for this view is the well known report by Walter Cronkite, called by some a "Cronkite Moment" The famous Eddie Adams's photograph as well as editorials in major newspapers. Television reporting is also credited for bringing the horror of war into the living rooms of the United States. It is widely believed that the media portrayal then caused the public to turn against the war. This view is held by many in the military and some political conservatives in the United States. To this day, the Tet Offensive as an example of the important role of the political and psychological aspects of warfare.

War was stalemated theory

The second view, that the war had reached a stalemate and caused the Johnson administration to reevaluate reports of the war's progress. Specifically Robert Komer reported to Ellsworth Bunker that the pacification program (CORDS) now had 68% of SVN population was under control of Saigon while 17 % was under control of NLF. (schmitz p 56) MACV reported that as of the end of 1967 the communist were "unable to mount a major offensive". General Bruce Palmer reported that "the Viet Cong has been defeated" and that "He can't get food and he can't recruit. He has been forced to change his strategy from trying to control the people on the coast to trying to survive in the mountains." (Schmitz p 58)

In spite of this, public support in the United States continued to decline. In October of 1967 for the first time a plurality of Americans thought the war was a mistake. To shore up public support Johnson brought Westmoreland back to the United States to assure the public that progress was being made which led to the statement that a point in the conflict had been reached "where the end comes into view." According to this view the reevaluation of the war by senior members of the Johnson administration to evaluate Westmorelands request for additional troops during the Tet offensive was resulted in the end of the escalation phase of the war.. Supporters of this view cite McNamara's resignation, Clark Clifford and The Wise Men advice to Johnson that the war was unwinnable and the United States should take steps to disengage and seek a political solution. This view holds that this reevaluation caused the Johnson administration to conclude that the war had reached a stalemate. This view is held by some Vietnam War historians and others.

Although US public opinion polls continued to show a majority supporting involvement in the war, this support continued to deteriorate and the nation became increasingly polarized over the war. President Lyndon Johnson saw his popularity fall sharply after the Offensive, and he withdrew as a candidate for re-election in March of 1968. While the Tet Offensive is frequently seen as an example of the value of media influence and popular opinion in the pursuit of military objectives, James Arnold wrote "At the time, political and military leaders from Johnson and Westmoreland down blamed the Press for losing the war. The effort continued for years thereafter as discredited leaders sought to recover prestige. But their carping obscures the fact already described that even with a fully muzzled Press America had no viable war-winning strategy"

That the Communists were able to mount a major, country-wide assault at all was a blow to U.S. hopes of winning the war rapidly, and starkly called into question General Westmoreland's earlier public reports of progress in the War. Likewise, the optimistic assessments of the Johnson administration and the Pentagon came under heavy criticism and ridicule. Stanley Karnow noted that "a West Point textbook on the war ... attributed the 'complete surprise' achieved by the Communists to a U.S. 'intelligence failure ranking with Pearl Harbor.'"

Troop Request

On the 20th of Feb Lyndon Johnson sent Gen. Wheeler to Vietnam to determine Westmoreland's military requirements to respond to the Offensive. Wheeler's written report contained Westmoreland's request for 206,000 additional troops. According to Wheeler's report, that in spite of heavy loses North Vietnam and Viet Cong forces were "operating with relative freedom in the countryside" and that South Vietnamese forces were in a "defensive posture around towns and cities," Wheeler's report stated that the additional troops were needed to "counter the enemy offensive", to restore security in the cities, towns and countryside and to "regain the initiative through offensive operations".

According to the Pentagon Papers "A fork in the road had been reached. Now the alternatives stood out in stark reality. To accept and meet General Wheeler's request for troops would mean a total U.S. military commitment to SVN--an Americanization of the war, a callup of reserve forces, vastly increased expenditures. To deny the request for troops, or to attempt to again cut it to a size which could be sustained by the thinly stretched active forces, would just as surely signify that an upper limit to the U.S. military commitment in SVN had been reached." The Pentagon Papers Gravel Edition Volume 4 Chapter 2, "U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments,

To evaluate Westmoreland's request and its possible impact on domestic politics Johnson convened a task force on Vietnam. Johnson also called for a complete "A to Z" reassessment. This reassessment included the CIAs assessment that: "They (the communists) certainly were not desperate or fearful of early collapse. A reconsideration of their capabilities to succeed in a long war may have been a contributing factor. And they probably regarded the balance of forces as sufficiently favorable to warrant a major and widespread offensive. The fact of Presidential elections in the US may have influenced their decision, and, of course, the tactical advantage of the Tet truce played a role in the immediate timing. In any case, it does not appear that they undertook the present offensive because they had concluded that protracted conflict was no longer feasible for them."U.S State Department Policy Reassessment and the "A to Z" Review

Clifford Task Force members Rostow, Wheeler, and Taylor argued that considering the complete collapse of the PAVN/Viet Cong offensive, the lopsided casualty ratio, the lack of a popular uprising in support of the attacks, and the failure of the attacking forces to gain and hold significant territorial assets represented an opportunity to defeat the North Vietnamese on the United States terms. Members Nitze, Warnke and Katzenbach on the other hand argued that neither side could win militarily, that North Vietnam could match any troop increase and it was time to seek a negotiated settlement.

While this was being deliberated, the request was leaked to the press and published across three columns of the Sunday edition of The New York Times on March 10, 1968. The article, written by Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith, reveled that the request had started a debate within the administration. According to the article many high-level officials believed that the increase would be matched by the communists and would lead to a stalemate at a higher level of violence. The article also stated that officals were saying in private that "widespread and deep changes in attitudes, a sense that a watershed has been reached"

Then-Lieutenant Colonel Dave Palmer later wrote in Summons of the Trumpet: "Looked upon erroneously but understandably by readers as a desperate move to avert defeat, news of the request for 206,000 men confirmed the suspicions of many that the result of the Tet Offensive had not been depicted accurately by the President or his spokesmen. If the Communists had suffered such a grievous setback, why would we need to increase our forces by 40 percent?" Clark Clifford also pointed out the same dilemma. At a meeting with Johnson and McNamara he said "There is a very strange contradiction in what we are saying and doing. On one hand, we are saying that we have known of this build up. We now know the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched this type of effort in the cities. We have publicly told the American people that the communist offensive was: (a) not a victory, (b) produced no uprising among the Vietnamese in support of the enemy, and (c) cost the enemy between 20,000 and 25,000 of his combat troops. Now our reaction to all of that is to say that the situation is more dangerous today than it was before all of this. We are saying that we need more troops, that we need more ammunition and that we need to call up the reserves."

Media impact

Many people, both at the time and in retrospect, have criticized the U.S media for the negative light in which it portrayed both the war in general and the Tet Offensive in particular. Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, complained of "all the doom and gloom we see in the U.S. press" after Tet. General Westmoreland would later write: "The war still could have been brought to a favorable end following the defeat of the enemy’s Tet Offensive. But this was not to be. Press and television had created an aura, not of victory, but defeat."

Some conservative authors have accused the press of being responsible for losing the war. For example, in Certain Victory: How Hanoi Won The War, Dennis Warner writes "This is the only war lost in the columns of The New York Times. They created an image of South Vietnam that was as distant from the truth as not even to be a good caricature. There were those who invented, distorted, and lied."

One of the most commonly cited works on the media is Big Story, by Peter Braestrup, a former Marine infantry officer and reporter for The Washington Post during the Tet Offensive. Braestrup analyzed press coverage of the Tet offensive and concluded that the press misreported the offensive as a defeat for the U.S. and that the reporting amounted to a "portrait of defeat".

Probably the most well-known example of an anti-war statement in the press is Walter Cronkite's special report on the war of February 27, 1968. After returning from a two week tour of Vietnam in which he "met with American and South Vietnamese officials, toured the country and reported from ongoing battles in Hue and other places" (Schmitz p 110) he returned to New York where directly criticized the military leadership and the Johnson administration: "We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest cloud." He concluded by saying that the U.S. was "mired in a stalemate" and called for a negotiated end to the conflict. This was in contrast to his first report in Saigon where he reported that "The Viet Cong suffered a military defeat (Schmitz p 111)

Studies of media impact on public opinion

Daniel Hallin and Clarence Wyatt also studied the effect of the media on public opinion. They found virtually no evidence to support any causal relationship between editorial tone and bias in the media with loss of public support for the war. Hallin maintains that there was in fact a shift in the tone of coverage during and after Tet, but this change was a reflection of the shift in the opinions of elite decisions makers in the United States.

Professor John Mueller also studied the effects of the media on public opinion during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. He found no relationship between the media and popular support but linked support to casualty levels.

Army historian William Hammond, considered an authority on military and media relations concluded that there was little evidence showing a link between media coverage and popular support. Hammond wrote "that press reports were... more accurate than the public statements of the administration in portraying the situation in Vietnam." But by 1968, the charge that the press lost Vietnam had become an article of faith to many Vietnam veterans. In fact, it had been General Westmoreland's rosy military predictions to the press and his inability to predict the Tet Offensive that undercut public support. Many journalists stationed in Saigon felt betrayed by him for not anticipating events and for wrongly guiding the lens of the media on to Khe Sanh. "The battle dragged on for two months ..." writes Stanley Karnow, "becoming almost daily fare for American television viewers ...."

Impact on domestic politics in the United States

As the Johnson Administration deepened U.S. involvement in Vietnam, questions arose about the veracity of government pronouncements. The phrase "credibility gap" emerged to describe the increasing public scepticism. In November 1967, in response to mass protests at the Pentagon the month before, President Johnson started a public relations campaign to convince the public that the United States was winning the war. Johnson stated that the war would last "not many more nights." General Westmoreland told the National Press Club that a point in the conflict had been reached "where the end comes into view." But as James Witz commented, Tet "contradicted the claims of progress ... made by the Johnson Administration and the military." After Tet, President Johnson continued to claim the war was going well for the United States. His credibility was undermined however by the leak of Westmoreland's request for 206,000 additional troops just two days before the United States Democratic Party New Hampshire Primary. President Johnson suffered a unexpected setback in the primary, finishing barely ahead of United States Senator Eugene McCarthy. Soon after, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced he would join the contest for the Democratic nomination, further emphasizing the plummeting support for Johnson's Administration in the wake of Tet. On March 31, Johnson announced he would not seek reelection, and announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam.

Also in March of 1968, Johnson announced that General Westmoreland would be replacing General Harold K. Johnson as Army Chief of Staff. Although technically a promotion, few doubted that Westmoreland was being "kicked upstairs" in response to Tet.

See also

• Massacre at Huế
• Battle of Hue
• Father Buu Dong
• Vietnam War

References

• Adams, Samuel A. (1994). The War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir. Steerforth Publishing. ISBN 1-883642-46-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Arnold, James R. (1990). The Tet Offensive 1968. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-98452-4.
• Berman, Larry. (1991) Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate. W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-30778-6

• Boorman, Scott A. (1971). The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-501493-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Braestrup, Peter (1977). Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. Westview Press. ISBN 0-89158-012-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Gerders, Louise, I. ed. (2005) Examining Political Issues Through Political Cartoons: The Vietnam War. Greenhaven Press, ISBN 0-7377-2531-1.

• Karnow, Stanley (1991). Vietnam: A History. Penguin. ISBN 0-670-84218-4hc.
• Oberdorfer, Don (1971). Tet!: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6703-7.
• Palmer, Dave (1978). Summons of the Trumpet: US-Vietnam in Perspective. Presidio Press. ISBN 0-89141-550-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Witz, James (1991). The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War. Cornell University Press.
• Hallin, Daniel (March, 2003). "Presentation given at the "American Media and Wartime Challenges" Conference" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Cronkite, Walter (February 27, 1968). "Text of "We are mired in a stalemate" broadcast".
• North, Don. "An American Reporter Witnessed the VC Assault on the U.S. Embassy". HistoryNet.com.
• A Viet Nam Reappraisal Clark M. Clifford
• John Prados The Hidden History of the Vietnam War
• How Great Nations Can Win Small Wars YAGIL HENKINA Azure spring 5766 / 2006, No. 24
• Westmoreland request for troops Feb 12(#68)
• Time Magazine Mar 1, 1968