Tet was a disaster for the VC and in some cases the NVA. Both were whipped soundly. The disaster for America was the controlling of the war by politicians. Politicians that had fear in their hearts, fear of China and Russia. I wish the author would have gone on to the end of the war. Although he did mention the College Deferment. Sadly this was the low point (the deferment) in America's race relations. Imagine all being equal in this nation, but not all were required to serve. In 1973 the draft was dropped after a ruling that indeed it was prejudicial. Yes two Democrats, two presidents had chosen to give deferments to a vast majority of "White Young Men" because they were in college. All this under the pretense that those deferred will make our country stronger. Hmmmm. To all those that were drafted and served. Thank you... To Presidents Kennedy and Johnson... Shame on you....
1
Read Karl Marlantes novel "Matterhorn" its amazing and concise to the period discussed in this article. Totally recommended and award winning.
wow this brings back alot of stuff. i had a fta, i think i still have, a fta button. i worked as a red cross volunteer at walter reed in '68. amazing what metal does to flesh. i never demonstrated but i rode a bus from dc up to nj to campaign for eugene mc carthy. i had a husband (he died 2 yrs ago) who has a presidential unit citation for khe sanh.....he did 2 tours as a f-4 pilot. that citation was for keeping 6k marines alive while surrounded by 30k nva. i could never figure out why when we went to a vietnamese restaurant, the
owners were so friendly when they found out he'd been a fighter pilot. i could never figure it out until i saw ken burns series--the reason is that what came after the americans left was so much worse....
you know i look at the teenagers marching and demonstrating after parkland and i think "it's like what happened w/vietnam" young people had a very real reason to protest viet nam--the draft and young people have a very real reason to protest today--getting shot THEY CAN CHANGE THINGS just like the protests back then led to change and thats very positive
1
Great piece Don...you still have it.
The curse of America has been to fight geo/political wars...first it was Korea, as a way of proving how the UN would treat communist aggression and then our long involvement in Vietnam, which actually began after the French were defeated during Eisenhower's Admin.
How can we win a war when our reason is based on US economics rather than the welfare of the Vietnamese? Our reason for being, wrapped in our Red scare brainwashing, was to maintain American hegemony in the region.
The fact the leaders in the South were bigger crooks and villains than the commies in the north didn't enter our reasoning. How can you win a war when the enemy keeps on coming while all we wanted to was get going back to the States.
Much of the same situation now faces us in Afghanistan...We can't always be there. The people have to want to type of rule they want and be willing to fight for it. The main problem,which we didn't have in Vietnam, is terrorism coming from such countries, which supplies the motivation to fight on as long as it takes.
2
Those who believe the war was won because of Viet Cong and NVA losses after Tet are living a pipe dream. Without the support of the population, there is no way we could have "won". On my first patrol through a village near Da Nang in July, 1968, the two reactions I got from the villagers were "Please don't hurt me Mr. Marine" and "If I had a gun, you'd be dead" - hardly the support for the cause we had been told existed among the South Vietnamese. It's easy to blame the media for the outcome, but actual research shows that the US populace lead, rather than followed the media. After Tet, it was abundantly clear that the war could not be "won". As other commentators have noted, it was obvious from history that we couldn't "win" even before the first advisors landed there.
1
Just recently became willing to really look back 50 years. The NY Times series on Vietnam 1967-68 is really helping drain old wounds. Was gung ho for 10 years throughout Civil Air Patrol until Air Force ROTC graduation in 1968. Being intentionally bad forced an AF discharge, then draft dodging resulted in a disastrous Naval Reserve hitch culminating in a shrink’s letter scaring the Navy Into a general discharge. Take no peace in justification, just relieved to finally come out. Only regret is that I always assumed it was politically disqualifying.
'Only regret is that I assumed it was politically disqualifying.' Obviously not. If anything, you're right up there will Clinton, Bush 43 and Trump. The vast majority of posters on these NYT articles will see you as a genuine patriot.
For me, and I presume, like many others that served in Vietnam, I see your experience through a lens of indifference rather than contempt.
1
The "loss of Vietnam" eerily parallels the "loss of China", both militarily and diplomatically. And both "losses" were exploited by conservatives for political motives.
In the '30s FDRs lack of information (interest?) contributed to the lack of sufficient material support of Chiang Kai-shek during China’s war with Japan. He failed also diplomatically by his inept, politically motivated diplomatic choices. All this despite the omnipresence of Madam Chiang on the covers of Henry Luce's magazines.
In the '40s the US thought of China as a power securely led by the Nationalists, i.e., Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang's political power was tenuous, at best, and with the defeat of Japan, China became what was essentially a power vacuum. This power vacuum was an opening to the USSR which could not be filled by the Nationalists and was beyond the capability of the Nationalists to control.
In the '50s the Republican Party quickly, and successfully, branded the Democrats as "weak" on communism as the forth-coming McCarthy Era would prove. No one in the Johnson or Nixon administrations wanted to be tarred with the "who lost Vietnam" brush.
1
I suggest that the Tet Offensive, in its scale, surprise and deadliness, scared the bejeesuz out of the American public (despite the administration's attempt to whitewash the Offensive) and gave the American public a concrete reason to come down against further involvement.
In other words, Tet was a public relations disaster for the Johnson Administration.
USN 1967 - 71
Viet Nam 1968
I beg to differ. Many troops as early as 1964-66 were writing about the futility of the war and the fact that "our" side was a Catholic dictatorship in a dominantly Buddhist country. Google
http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1966-02-Dona...
I began changing my view in 1965 after talking to returning soldiers and Marines who were coming back and expressing their doubts and opposition to the war.
1
By the time of Tet we had suffered 20,000 kia's, and that pulling out would have wasted and dishonored those casualties.
So, we accepted another 38,000 in the end.
3
One last thought on those that fawn at how brilliant Henry Kissinger was. He and our invasion of Laos/Cambodia he brought in Pol Pot who went on to kills millions. That like most of Americas nasty, brutal history has been swept under the carpet. We put them in power set the machine going and then hide behind the curtain and come out and sprout all those nice things. It is like now Israel is using weapons provided by the US to give to the rebels in Syria. Gee, those are the same rebel group connected to the now deceased bin Laden. Think the people in power have brains operate on a higher plane and know what they are doing. Think again. Don't worry they are working right now on some fake event to start the war with Iran. PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, WMD and now a make believe atomic bomb. American should think once in awhile and one last time read history at least back to the end of WW II or maybe 1900 it is all interconnected. Jim Trautman
2
Well put, Mr. Trautman. So often you and commenters like you are wiser than the material you comment upon. Ditto, Guapo Rey's remark about the folly of honoring the fallen by making more offerings to the war machine comprised of the war industry in uniform and out.
2
They loved the kill ratio. Each week one had to provide how many of the enemy one had killed in a battle, or ambush etc. Funny years later I sat down and dug through all those casualties and how many had been killed. When I was finished I totaled the numbers and discovered we had killed the entire population of North Vietnam about four times over. Units made up the numbers most times to keep Westmoreland and the Johnson's Nixon happy. Jim Trautman
3
trainman is quite correct about faked body counts. I am reminded of one day at the Pentagon when almost everybody working there was given the day off. I never worked in the Pentagon, but I have spoken to several who were there then. The cause of the celebration? That by McNamara's precise calculations we had just destroyed the last truck the NVA and NLF possessed! No more supplies would ever flow south on anything bigger than a bicycle. It didn't matter that there were still lots of trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail day and night.
1
Sorry, trautman. My spell checker corrected your name to trainman.
Wow ! What a stunning collection of comments. 50 years after the war and it’s still being fought....
1
It won't end until we are all dead. I went and then came home to try to end the war. Fifty years later nothing sums it up for me better than what we said then "it don't mean nuthin."
1
The ugly reality is that the US is not now nor has been a functioning democracy. Even when the people realize the government routinely lies them into war after war. Wars end (at least so far)at the whim of the government and the corporations for which the government stands. Instead of truth, we are entertained by the master propagandist Ken Burns.
Even now the NYT is preparing us for the next round of wars with daily front page denunciations of China and Russia.
1
What I have always enjoyed then and now is the comments that the politicians made about once you are in the mess and it goes on and on. We can't get out we will lose face whose face and guess what they know and the grunts there know the war is lost so who exactly losing face. Oh, right is their election chances. Or we can't let those already dead die in vain. Well, in Vietnam we did die in vain and came home to being addicted to drugs or haunted for the rest of your life. For all the rah rah's watch the last ten minutes of Platoon it says it all. Lessons learned none, 17 years in Afghanistan and trillions that could have been used for Veterans, homeless,how about health care flushed down a toilet even with better outcomes. So safe one has to leave the Kabul airport by helicopter to fly back to the Green Zone. We do love those walled Fort Apache set ups. Vietnam base camps basically Fort Apace, safe just don't go outside the perimeter. In closing I always loved Westmoreland (gee he always looked clean and fresh) just another 50,000 more troops we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And you knew who held it hint not one of us. Jim Trautman
1
REMF...I knew this...had to look up FTA, but then I was USMC....I also remember FNG....
The Vietnam War was sheer stupidity on the part of the U.S. from the first day.
There is no evidence the Gulf of Tonkin incident ever occurred.
For 11 years, America threw millions of young people onto the trash heap of history, all for nothing.
At least in Afghanistan, without the draft we are only throwing a few thousand young people on the trash heap of history.
1
I was in Vietnam Nam from January 1970 to January 1971. I was a REMF. There were a lot of us who were less than enthusiastic about our presence there. One example of how widespread it was - even among those out in the bush - has stuck with me.
At Christmas time in 1970, I was listening to a radio broadcast of the Bob Hope USO show. He was at one of the large U.S. military bases that served the grunts who were doing the dirty work - going out on patrols, engaging the VC. They weren’t privileged desk jockeys or lifers holding safe jobs; mostly, they were draftees.
Back in the States, the Bob Hope show would be run on television, via recording. I had watched it myself in the years before I went there. It portrayed an audience of flag waving, all-American, smiling, “round eye” girl ogling, safe for prime time viewing GI’s having a good time. How massively the sound had been edited became obvious when I heard the “live” version on the radio that year.
What I heard during Hope’s usual schtick of semi-bawdy jokes, appeals to cheap patriotism and self-depracatory one liners was a nearly steady stream of heckling, obscene language and mocking insults directed at him, from the audience. It was clear and unmistakable that the “troops” were no more in favor of the war -at least at that point- than could be found at your average college town back in “the world”.
8
This article doesn't address the "How" that the title promised.
Dearth Vader - the piece says that until Tet, America's soldiers, politicians, and people generally accepted our struggle in Vietnam. Tet proved that the politicians and generals been lying most egregiously about how we had already won victoriously, and even worse that we were NOT going to "fight to win". Attitudes than changed fast and considerably.
1
I was for the war against communism and terrorism until I read that the the Americans were doing more fighting than the South Viet Namese and their leaders were corrupt, which was 2 years before Tet. Helping countries works. Taking care of them does not.
Eisenhower was responsible for America's involvement in the Vietnam War. He canceled the elections that were meant to unify the country. In his memoir Mandate for Change he informs us, “General elections in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were to be held in July 1956, supervised by an international commission” (p. 371, first edition). Eisenhower estimated that “80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai” (p. 372).
It is certainly possible that Vietnam would have voted to be unified under Communism. That happened anyway, after a costly and bloody war. Nothing was gained by canceling the elections.
2
Not only that, but the CIA overthrew the legally elected government in Iran. Simple reasons the Western oil companies wanted to control the oil. They brought back the man known as the Shah of Iran which led to the revolt in the late 70's and which is where we are at now. No one seems to want to remember how the West meddling has put us on a footing for a war with Iran. Also never mentioned the revolt started because the Shah secret police who had been trained by Norman Schwarzskopf senior - father of the Gulf War general were brutal in killing and torturing anyone who stood up against the Shah. The final flash point was when he raised up the price of oil and created the oil lineups in the US I remember those because the US wanted him to purchase F111 fighter/bomber aircraft. So with his grand style he needed more money. For those that have sung the praises of Kissenger he created butchery and still does. The hostages at the US embassy were taken when Henry Kissenger convinced Jimmy Carter to let in the Shah for cancer treatment. What I love now is Trump starting a trade war with Canada when it was Canada that hide some of the embassy staff and got them out of Iran on Canadian passports. What is sad about America not just with Trump and his followers how little Americans know of their history even care. The Vietnam War did not just happen because Johnson madeup fake PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was deliberate policy. Jim Trautman
2
The government of Iran was overthrown during the Eisenhower administration. Had there not been a Shah, there might never have been a Khomeini. Eisenhower may have been the worst American President in history.
Kissinger and Carter were not quite so bad. Letting the Shah in for cancer treatment was a merciful thing to do, even if it turned out to be a terrible mistake.
>> Tensions among the troops was like nothing
Tensions were, not tensions was. Also “barrack walls” should be barracks walls.
The title "broke America" is completely non-sequitur. The article is reasonably written and speaks to the change in morale in field soldiers in Vietnam after Tet. It says virtually nothing about America at large. Whoever coopted this title onto this piece should be reprimanded, or more.
1
Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad with hubris and a limitless military budget.
2
The Johnson Admiration lost the chance for victory in Vietnam
- “Truong Nhu Tang, one of the NLF’s founders…observed: ‘The truth was that Tet cost us half of our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were simply unable to replace them with new recruits.’”
- “General Giap lost 85,000 of his best PAVN troops and had virtually nothing militarily to show for it.”
Quotations from Douglas Pike, U.C. Berkeley
- NVA Col. Bui Tin’s assessment, “Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantage when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September [1968] were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968.”
“How North Vietnam Won the War,” Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1995, pp
The War was Won:
“A free Vietnam had proven that it had the will and the capability to defend itself with the assistance, but not the participation, of its American ally against the enemy to the north assisted by Soviet and Chinese allies. On the ground in South Vietnam, the war had been won.”
Colby, Lost Victory 321 (1989).
“
1
Wars are won when people defeat the enemy. This ARVN clearly did not do, although it abandoned to it 130,000 tons of ammunition and 6 billion dollars worth of arms - about 30 billion dollars worth worth in today's prices.
Nixon wrote in “Leaders” (1982) that while riding from the airport with Churchill while Ike’s VEEP in the late 50’s, Churchill wanrned him that America should stay out of Vietnam, the French having fouled it up beyond retrieval.
3
Yes, your reporting was “so negative and inaccurate” as to have “caused continual problems for the Military Assistance Command.”
The RVN won Tet, but the western media was hapilly played by the communist north, and to this day, most westerners believe that Tet was a military defeat, not the military victory it was. After Tet, had the media and politicians not betrayed our partners in Vietnam, the tide would have continued north and 300 million people could have lived in freedom instead of being puppets of the communist govenrment.
The combined population of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos is 115 million.
Our government lies to us with astounding facility. When historians finally write the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, I'm guessing it will make the ldeceit and chicanery associated with the war in Vietnam look like child's play.
1
I love lots of the comments. The ones who believe the war was not lost after TET, but won. Did any of you serve like I did. The war should never have happened in the first place try reading about the history of the region. Ho fought against the Japanese while the French were Vichy and in bed with the Japanese. He was promised (his mistake by all the powers for his help the French would not return and Vietnam would be a unified country. Needless to say like the West led by the US and UK and France were so good at using you and then discarding the deal after the war. Try reading how the French and British did not want to lose to many so they rearmed Japanese soldiers to take on the Viet Minh. The first major report by the CIA stated that the US should live up to its promise and not get involved with the French.So the Viet Minh fought the French and destroyed them at a little place called Dien Bien Phu where the arrogant French settled in a valley and believed the Viet Ming could never get artillery up in the mountains. Well did not work for the French and they gave up and the country was divided like we love to do. In 2018 nothing has changed no lessons learned. Try listening to the Johnson recording a couple of days after he sent the first Marines in. How now that they were in how would he get them out. It became the same nonsense if we don't stop there there they will be in Hawaii. I love people who did serve did not live,but know much. Read the Pentagon Papers. Jim Trautman
6
All the dead who met their demise after MacNamara and his like knew the futility. Dead or alive they have much blood on their hands.
I always enjoyed right before he died to make his peace with God MacNamara wrote how wrong the war was. As my late wife who lived with a man who was haunted by that war said, "How cowardly back then he was in power and had the capability to do something and did nothing. Now that he is near death he spits on all those that served and died and their families. A coward" She was so right no matter what men and women did what they believed their country wanted of them. My wife was part of the anti war flower power movement and she died in her mellow yellow bedroom. Me I have never flown the American flag since and won't watch any fake President like Trump who is on the road to start another major war. Time for Americans to read their history at least since the end of WW II. We as a nation have gone off the rails badly. I live in Canada and watch now as Trumps slaps duties on a country that has always been an allie of the US, got hostages out of Iran without worrying about the consequences and has stood by the US in Afghanistan and now in the war against ISIS. So now Trump and since he is your President spits in our face and other allies. Need to check and see how much money Ross and Navarro made from their Hedge funds that gutted the steel companies in the early 21 Century. In reality wants every other nation to bend and kiss your know what. And this all connects to Vietnam. Jim Trautman
All right - We lost the war when 1. When Senator McCarthy / anti-communist scare cleansed the State Department of all experienced Asian hands 2. Becauise of #1 We did not understand that Vietnam and China were ages old enemies AND respond to Ho Chi Min's requests for a diplomatic discussion (the Vietnamese wanted freedom, they were not our enemy). 3. We did not listen to French General Charles deGaul when he told us, after his defeat, we could not in and would be fools to enter VietNam (as the French / General deGaul were thinking they could regather their pre-WW1/2 epire). Etc. Anecdotally a cousin was a CIA agent in VietNam in the 50s (I figured that out years later). My grandmother giving me the stamps from the letters she got from him was how I knew to ask questuions later.
4
Growing up in India we were all very proud of Vietnam. In Asia nearly everyone knew who was on the right here, even if the Vietnamese were Left. The US must not delude itself that countries like South Korea, which sent troops, or Thailand where GIs went for rest and sex, felt any doubt on the matter. These were not free democratic societies, had US supported Governments, or needed US protection from ideology China or USSR. They also needed the money. They the US was bombing and killing innocent villagers. God Bless America.
1
Wonderful article further clarifying an oft-spoken-about issue. But in my opinion, the most critical turning point in the War was the moment when, many years before, Defense Secretary McNamara began lying to President Johnson. As redundant as it is, I think its hard for any story like this to not footnote the fact that we should have known we were losing this War years before the event noted here.
1
I was in Vietnam in a 105 howitzer battery right after Tet. The accuracy of Mr. Kirk's reporting doesn't impress me. Morale was high in my battery in the sense that we were confident that we could defend ourselves. As for the "Big War", we had no sense of it at all. Contrary to the many "Stab in the Back" comments, what destroyed support for the war was the accurate reports that Gen. Westmoreland was going to ask President Johnson for another major troop increase, which would have necessitated the mobilizing of the National Guard, depriving the privileged like George W. Bush with their escape hatch. Reaction against that idea was overwhelming in Congress and the poor general disappeared from the scene.
If Mr. Kirk thought that "FTA" only appeared after Tet, I don't think he knows what it's like to be a GI. As for fragging, a soldier with the 82nd Airborne who was in Vietnam in 1966 told of something a little less subtle than a grenade pin. The men thought their lieutenant was a total incompetent. So in the next fire fight they shot him in the back and killed him. If Mr. Kirk had fought the war, instead of writing about it, he might have a better story.
1
The Vietnam War broke America and it is still broken. With great regard to Marshall (The medium is the message) McLuhan, if we had the technological prowess 15 years earlier, the Korean War would have done the same thing.
Just substitute No Gun Ri for Mi Lai. If you raise youngsters to believe in honor and good deeds, don't expect them to fight and kill for worthless dictators and far flung empires.
That the American People cannot agree on Vietnam almost a half century after we left says a lot more about the nation than a shelf of books.
1
Little did we know then that the media was controlled by the Pentagon in selling a JUST war. The justification of the Phoenix program was particularly heinous. The Tet Offensive illustrated the extent to which the Pentagon fabricates and still does...In Iraq,Afghanistan,Syria,Libya,Somalia and Nigeria.
2
"F.T.A." You could call it out without fear of more than a dirty look- or chuckle- because in its brilliance the Army's recruiting slogan was:
Fun Travel Adventure. US Army 1969-1971. You can't make something like that up.
The original title for Bush’s war of choice in Iraq was Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Only after it was pointed out did it become Operation Iraqi Freedom, but we all knew it was about the oil.
Another articulate analysis of how the U.S. was affected, what the U.S did, and what it did and didn't do right or wrong.
But it was the Vietnamese suffering. By the thousands, by the tens of thousand, and by 1975, and in the years after, by uncountable millions.
Sure, Americans suffered and still suffer from that war. The guys I served with share messages about the war, still, 50 years after coming home, day in and day out.
But you should see what a gunship can do to a hamlet. American civilians should have to experience a B-52 strike. The average voter should have to be subjected to a village cordon and search. They should have to construct a bunker in their home and have to, have to, sleep in it at night and have it handy during the day, because war is always there, like the nightmare monsters Americans safely populate our movies with.
And not just Vietnam. Watch the BBC production on what happened to Cambodia.
American leaders threaten war as causally as Americans threaten each other on our highways because they couldn't move into another lane or were slowed down.
The first thing I saw arriving in Vietnam in April 1969, in the dark of night were tracers, and that was the last thing I saw on June 7, 1970. And the Vietnamese lived with it for 5 more years.
I went home. They were home.
And there we were making war. Sure, we anguished over whether we should be there, or not, but the whole time we laid waste to their nation
8
I think a better question to ask is, How did a complete military victory by US and South Vietnamese forces get spun into a defeat by the media? The Viet Cong ceased to exist after Ten - it was wiped out. All the fighting thereafter was by North Vietnamese regular troops, contrary to the media spin about the war being a popular uprising against US imperialism.
3
The chaotic departure of US army helicopters from the US embassy roof in Saigon in 1974 seems to be rather rushed; as the combatants sat in Paris. The first Viet Cong tank plowing through the front-gates added to the drama on world television. Graham Greene wrote about the QUIET AMERICAN in Vietnam during the French occupation and defeat in 1954. History written by the winners? Victory in WW2 came with a heavy price when the USSR confiscated Easter Europe 1945-1990 plus Japanese island. In the GREAT GAME Great Britain waltzed around Central Asia confronting the Russians to protect its crown jewel INDIA. That empire crumbled in 1918 after the loss of a generation of Englishmen in France despite claiming victory over Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. History open to interpretation or looking back in anger.
1
The Viet Cong ceased to exist? Excuse me but I was in country in 1968-69 and we encountered enough Local Force Viet Cong (farmers by day, guerrillas at night) who survived Tet. Much of the Main Force Viet Cong (full time soldiers) was, in fact, killed off but the survivors kept on fighting and fought well as did the North Vietnamese Army regulars. They also had more support from the local population than the South Vietnamese Army and Government. Our mistake was to fight a ground war in South Vietnam on the enemy's terms. Our only chance of winning would have been to invade North Vietnam in force. Of course this would have risked a much wider war with China. We should have decided if the risk was worth it or not and acted accordingly. If we had fought World War Two the same way that we fought the Vietnam War, Hitler would have died in bed as the undisputed ruler of Europe.
3
the departure was in 1975, not 74
1
It's also been well-reported that the TET offensive broke the back of North Vietnamese forces, and the US military could then have overrun N. Vietnam itself if LBJ and the politicians had allowed it. Still, it doesn't matter. Korea was a success story because South Korea is a dynamic democracy, while the North is, of course, a ludicrous caricature of a dystopia. Vietnam is all right today--still a bit poor, but with social freedoms and a slowly developing economy that looks to equal that of Thailand an Malaysia within a few years. Long story short, the Vietnam war was as unjust as GW Bush's Iraq invasion.
3
North Vietnam and the territories it occupies in the South are a repressive dictatorship. South Vietnam was no democratic paradise, but protected from invasion in a few decades it might have developed like South Korea.
The Tet Offensive did not break America.
The Media which misrpesented the Tet Offensive and failed to
report how two more offensives in 1968 were failures by North Vietnam,
continues to misrepresent the war.
It was North Vietnam under Le Duan who were the agressors,
it is they who planned the attacks on civilians in South Vietnam,
the very people they were supposed to be liberating and planned
the organised massacres at Hue.
Most soldiers are disgruntled.
The number of desertions from the Revolutionairy Army was enormous,
the number from both sides in the Civil War was likewise.
After the Euorpean Campaign was over in May of 1945,
the Army planned to send soldiers to fight in the Pacific.
A large majority of those soldiers informed the Army that they
would not go, and the Army fearing that they would go AWOL
once they returned to America and were re-united with their
families informed Truman. That is one reason why Truman dropped
the Atomic Bombs, he was running out of soldiers and 16 year old
Marines to attack Japan.
No one knew why were in Korea save the State Department had
drawn a line at the 38th Parallel. After the Summer of 1951, there
was no point to the war, the dividing line that became the DMZ stayed
about the same, soldiers knew so and wanted to go home, no one went
to Korea after 1951 thinking they were going to be part of a Liberation
Army.
LBJ and McNamara would not win the war.
Once the soldiers realised that - of course they felt betrayed.
4
Except one item, you're right. But at least South Korea is an economically and culturally vibrant democracy now, thanks to US intervention. Koreans are not my favorite people (I've lived around the world for 40 years outside the U.S.) but good on them for what they've achieved. Just look at their neighbors to the north.
Whichever side loses a war, it needs scapegoats.
1
Although Tet was acknowledged as a massive military defeat for the NVA and Viet Cong, it is sometimes viewed as a psychological victory for them in terms of American public support for the war. I’m sure that will be very comforting to the tens of thousands of NVA and VC who were killed in the 7 more years of war that followed, who might perhaps have wished for more of a “victory” victory.
1
in the spring of 1967 student college 2-S deferments were ended.
When middle class youth were now subject to the draft their parents began to put pressure on the Congress.
Congress finally cut off funds for the war [unfortunately 5 years later and another 25,000 US troops killed] and the war ended.
As long as the 2 S deferments were in place only lower class youth were subject to the draft and there was not that much opposition to the war.
10
Some of us understood the folly of this war long before the Tet offensive. My first demonstration against the Vietnam War was in 1964. When my brother's birthday came up #2 in the draft lottery, my father--a life-long defense department employee--told him not to go, because "the Vietnamese never did anything against us." He offered to send my brother to Canada and support him there. (Ira found another way out.)
What we are witnessing today--U.S. bases in 700+ countries, endless wars and interventions on behalf of immensely wealthy corporations and their corrupt puppets in Third World countries--is nothing new. It is the inevitable trajectory of empire, and like all empires, it inevitably declines. Our empire reached its peak after WWII, somewhere in the 1950s, and has been going downhill ever since.
12
There are only about 200 countries in the world. Claiming bases in 700+ discredits this comment.
Martha,
Are there 700 Countires in the world for the US to have bases in ?
tet was not only a break point for the US, it was also the breaking point for the Viet Cong who were close to being destroyed during that ill timed offensive. whether planned or not, it turned the war effort over to the North Vietnamese and certainly helped prevent a continuing war between the north and south. the South never had much respect for the north, a situation that continues in the south. The south has been cut out of being part of the government resulting in continued antagonism. who knows what might have happened if the VC would have been the conquering force.
2
"After all that destruction, for the enemy to mount such a widespread, if strategically futile, campaign spoke to the great distance between the generals’ grand pronouncements about “light at the end of the tunnel” and the reality on the ground."
With all due respect to the author, I'd argue that the Tet offensive was ,strategically speaking, spectacularly effective given that it almost single-handedly changed so many American minds about the possibility of actually winning the war.
3
We still want to be an Imperial Power, even though we cannot recognize that for the most part. It pays off in material riches for the top 1% and the Military Industrial Complex. Let's figure it out and get out of Afghanistan and Iraq now.
8
I was a 19 yr old air mobile grunt after Tet, and heard nothing about protests or politics at home. With all the combat assaults and months in the field, no radios, and certainly no real information on political matters, not even in letters from home; these were the elements of the specious present we fought and survived in. With respect to all, there was not time to fret about anything other than to fight and survive. Since returning, however, this is my take on it: After Tet, the lawyers and judges and professional thinkers and corporations in the US shifted their attention from Vietnam to Latin America. Along with Congress and the Administrations, they realized the mistake they had made in prosecuting a war in Vietnam, so they set their war mongering eyes on establishing dictatorships and refineries all across Latin America. It was chaos and closer to the US interests. So, the war in Vietnam after Tet was used to send a message to Latin America - 'See what we have wrought in Vietnam? That will happen to you if you push back at us.' Me and my fellow fighters were ignored, and left to die or addiction.
10
The Tet offensive broke the morale of the highest US military and civilian apparatus because it laid bare the extreme vulnerability of the Saigon regime and US forces.
It was a blowback of "pacification " , which meant ( along with a "My lai a day " atrocities , Agent orange, etc..) the creation of refugees ( whose number was listed as a measure of pacification progress ). Unlike with the " strategic hamlets " program which organized their uprooting and control , the displaced were left to their own devices . They came on their own on the outskirts of the urban centers and their slums encircled the towns . Instead of pushing away the VC , pacification brought them much nearer .
The VC brought plenty of arms and ammunition and hid them within the slums without being betrayed anywhere by the slumdwellers . That's the measure of the support they enjoyed : that's what should be understood as " general uprising " , the attackers were given shelter , full help .
To drive the point home , the VC reiterated their attacks two more times in 1968 ( mini Tets ) .The US-SVN were forced to retreat around the towns leaving the countryside under VC control ; the countryside being the center of power , to win or lose along with the war .
Actually the US were encircled everywhere ; in the countryside , their bases were shelled or victims of surprise attacks the length and breadth of Vietnam ; they were constantly on the defensive . Their strategic situation was untenable , desperate .
9
And after the Easter Offensive in 1972, when U.S. support was still full other than with ground troops, despite horrendous casualties to the NVA, forces loyal to unification and the government in Hanoi controlled as much of the South as did the RVN government in then Saigon.
2
The Johnson Admiration lost the chance for victory in Vietnam
- “Truong Nhu Tang, one of the NLF’s founders…observed: ‘The truth was that Tet cost us half of our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were simply unable to replace them with new recruits.’”
- “General Giap lost 85,000 of his best PAVN troops and had virtually nothing militarily to show for it.”
Quotations from Douglas Pike, U.C. Berkeley
- NVA Col. Bui Tin’s assessment, “Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantage when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September [1968] were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968.”
“How North Vietnam Won the War,” Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1995, pp
The Tet Offensive finally shed light on the Hanoi regime’s policy of killing and terrorizing their own people, which was to be ethnic cleansing, as in the massacres at Hue during and after Tet ‘68. The Hanoi regime was, and remains, racist and heralds its own terrorist beatings and kidnapping for the ‘obedience’ that kept the SVN everywhere bowed and humiliated. Such is the countryside, as you well know. Remember the young Ho Chi Minh’s Marxist hamlet program? The one that forced the relocation of women and children, and disappeared the SVN landowners? Their’s was no popular movement. Their’s was no agrarian proletariat uprising. It was Hanoi’s terrorism and brutal dictatorship that won the day.
The Tet Offensive broke the myth that there was a North and a South Vietnam. Instead of one ethnic sectarian historical Vietnam divided by socioeconomic political civil war backed up by foreign powers. Vietnamese fought national liberation from China, Khmer, Thailand, France, Japan, France and America.
5
There were plenty of credible naysayers in the U.S. government foreign policy and war college ranks with regards to the "domino theory" at the very time it was being advanced as our reason for being in Vietnam. Why weren't they listened to? Might it have been the very military-industrial complex Eisenhower futilely warned against ?
4
After the communist conquered South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia did fall to communism as a result of the North Vietnamese efforts to spread communism. Thus two dominoes actually did fall, causing the death of 2 million people at a minimum. (The straw man explanation of the domino theory seems to be popularly accepted on the other hand, that once the south fell the entire world would instantaneously poof and become communist. Since that obviously didn't happen the domino theory is now taught as a completely farcical "red scare" or a ridiculous commie witch hunt on par with how McCarthyism is taught. A strong case can be made however -but you can never prove something that didn't happen- that had American not fought in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia could not have suppressed their own communist insurgencies in the late '60's -often brutally- that those two countries would have fallen as well putting the Sunda and Malacca straits and massive oil reserves in communist hands, and causing far more deaths as well.
1
The 2 million deaths caused by US military action in Vietnam and Cambodia?
I always love how people in the West see the world as belonging to them and any other nation that steps up to them has to be blown up. By the way Kissinger created Pol Pot to be a buffer and it was Kissinger and the US that insured that millions of Cambodians were slaughtered. In Central and South America and now in the Middle East we do the same thing, but wrap ourselves in God and goodness. The myth of America creating democracy around the world when the US is not one. Jim Trautman
Learning from experience is a tactical issue that changes with every war. We do learn how to fight more effectively in given environments. Going to war is a political issue. This tends to not change because the political interests in this country are relatively stable. So the criticism that 'we did not learn from Vietnam' is misplaced. For that to happen -- to learn about the disastrous implications of the decision to go to war -- requires a huge change in political (and, arguably, economic) interests in the country. Much of Europe appears to have accomplished that. The reported "table war" games in the White House shows that we are as far away as ever.
3
The youth culture that sprung up with the baby boomers and their new love of the Beatles, the Stones and psychedelic music along with M L King's pacifism and the civil rights mov't brought down the monolithic father knows best image propaganda that a communist take over in Vietnam would bring down the free world. The domino theory and Munich like appeasement was used by politicians afraid of being seen as weak on communism. The pointlessness of the war made such one time true believers like Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon Papers. The Tet Offensive was perfect psychological warfare for the VC, especially with Westmoreland of the military industrial complex saying the US had won a huge victory. Diem's assassination and dizzying corruption of South Vietnam's regime certainly didn't enhance the motivation of the American GI. America's war was once again a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. Life was good on US campuses with the counter culture for affluent college kids. The war was a loser because it pushed all the wrong buttons. Walter Cronkite's sympathetic influential voice to middle America pronounced this war made no sense. Then there were the Nixon/Kissinger horrors.
12
The essay doesn’t emphasize enough the impact on the outcome of all the lying by those in high places (president Johnson, general westmoreland et al).
A lesson we apparently still haven’t learned.
27
For those few really paying attention and who were honest at the time ... it was apparent that Ap Bac was the real beginning of the end in Vietnam!
3
The Tonkin Gulf resolution is evidence that America was broken long before the Tet offensive. America is still broken in the same ways. America did not learn a thing from anything that happened in Vietnam. The WMD lie used to get America to invade and occupy another country for a decade that it had no business being in is the evidence for this.
We don't learn that we don't learn.
36
So right. Americans love to believe they are a peaceful nation. Yet, at 72 the US has been at war every day of my life. If the people or countries did not give us what we wanted we bombed and killed them and took it. Look at the history of the movement West. That hero Jackson who signed the law that if an Native American would not give you his land you had the right to kill and take. Why does anyone think America is a peaceful nation it never has been. One wonders why all the school killings and other events the US has a long history of that type of event. Sadly the majority like Trump won't admit to it. By the way how are his bone spurs I guess they don't hurt him on the golf course which he spends more time there than in is office. Americans believe war and killing is like a baseball game. Well, here is something to think about the high point was WW II the US has not won a war since and never even close. Jim Trautman
4
I just took my 29 year old son on a tour of Cambodia and South Vietnam. We were on a 28 person boat floating down the Mekong for two weeks. Along the we stopped at various town and village of significance and studied the centuries old history, impact of the war and how the culture was impacted but has been restored slowly and methodically since. Vietnam today is vibrant emerging economy. Cambodia has a ways to go but they are making every effort to modernize. Both these countries suffered enormously as a result of our determination to maintain a corrupt South Vietnamese government and keep the country from uniting and enjoying peace and prosperity. The North prevailed ultimately and Kissinger and Nixon can now be seen as the war criminals they are for prolonging the way for political gain. There are war memorials everywhere (i.e. Cu Chi) but the spirit of the people is in tact. They had the will and leadership to persevere and god bless them for it.
35
I’m glad you and your son had a nice expensive 2 week vacation in Vietnam. But the narrative that your hosts taught you is very one sided and incomplete.
Vietnam is still hobbled by its corrupt, fossilized Communist government which imposes inefficiencies limiting foreign investment that prevents it from growing like Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Asian countries. At the time of the Vietnam War, when Asia was shedding colonialism, there really was an evangelical Vietnamese Communism that wanted to take over its neighbors. Le Duan and Vo Nguyen Giap brutalized, terrorized, and slaughtered > 2 million of their own people. That wasn’t the doing of the US. Communist insurgencies in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines were successfully beaten with American and British help. If the Communists had won, planned economies would have prevailed and massive foreign investment leading to economic growth would have not occurred. Moreover, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan would have had to adapt to the political situation and would have been constrained.
Nixon and Kissinger were well traveled, well read and were intimately familiar with the history and politics of Asia. They were dealt a bad hand, but played it extremely well. If Nixon had not engaged Mao, Deng Xioping would not have been able to embrace capitalism and China would not have grown. Nixon and Kissinger changed the world, mostly for the better.
4
Tell that to the Kurds, betrayed by Kissinger and now yet again.
I wonder if we could have seen that a semi-Capitalist Vietnam would eventually emerge (as did China) if we still would have been so frightened by Communists.
Yeah, the Tet offensive and militarist voters and the extreme Left and Nixon's treasonous "peace with honor" and Domino theorist and "credibility" zealots.
1
If only we had learned from our past mistakes, we wouldn't be in Iraq or Afganistan or perhaps in another unwanted future with North Korea. Would someone please remind me why hundreds of thousands of innocent Afgan men, women, and children had to die?
25
The war machine and wall street "need" the money and Exxon et al. needs the oil and oil pipelines.
What else can explain it.
us army 1969-1971/california jd
No doubt the times enjoyed writing headlines like this. It’s a lie of course. And the use of it displays why millions of Americans don’t and won’t trust the times. Shame on you
5
From a human note, my older brother was drafted and sent to Viet Nam. We watched the war ever night on TV. We waited and waited for word on whether my brother was alive or dead. He didn't come back it destroyed our family. For 16 years we have watched another set of young men go marching off to another war. Politicians once again failed to inform us of the truth and when this war would come to an end if ever. We have failed to protect our young men and women once again. God bless all of our brave men and women, today please keep them safe.
6
No watch FOX News where I bet they say we should have won the war. It was Obama's fault. Remind about the coward in the White House and his bone spurs. Jim Trautman
I remember that time. Spending the night at my girlfriend's house. Her father was Army in country. My dad had already done his duty. We spent the night waiting for word on whether his position had been attacked. Thank good for the break in the news cycle, or we might have been up for days.
Word came the next day he was OK. Just another Pleasant Valley Sunday.
7
America went into the ICU when JFK was shot. The plugs were pulled when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr were killed.
23
Professor Mark Moyar and General H.R. McMaster have argued at length not too long ago that we could and should have won the war. Counterfactual history, a specialty of military intellectuals. If only they had been in charge.
16
What there to win? If you but read pre-war history, you would know that, just like the French, we could not "win." I was there in 1967 and was a true believer then. No more.
12
Perhaps McMaster has argued in another forum that we could and should have won the war but that is not the conclusion that flows from his book Dereliction of Duty. See, e.g., pp. 170-171 where he cites to pre-escalation war games and predictions of George Ball to the effect that escalation would simply lead to more escalation.
6
Agreed, I read his worthy book which is in many ways a precis of David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest"
I was there, a 24 year old infantry platoon leader in the Delta. Not long after TET, I was wounded for the second time and nearly died in a Saigon hospital from the infection that ravaged my entire body after have spent hours in a rice paddy canal neck deep in contaminated water after a horrific enemy ambush.
The VC had quickly rebounded from the drubbing they suffered during TET, they were as lethal, crafty, and determined as ever. From that point forward their numbers would be bolstered by more and more North Vietnamese regulars.
I spent another 25 years serving as an infantry officer.
I am convinced of one undeniable and persistent fact, that the so called lesson of Vietnam was in fact never learned, it was a fiction and a delusion proven without question in the contrived invasion of Iraq in 2003, and our subsequent 16 year war there and in Afghanistan — both with no end currently in sight.
108
Well written G Sears, horrible mistakes are difficult to eradicate. As correct as you are re Iraq 2 and Afghanistan, they were an "improvement" over WW1 simply because they only involved two countries directly.
As Star Trek taught us, hundreds of yrs in the future, we will still have populous that we call for wars like Mexican, Spanish American, WW1, Vietnam, Iraq 2, etc. etc.
Our job as Americans and members of the human race are to make sure these horrible mistakes are few and far between.
3
Thank you for being there when I wasn't (college deferment followed by a high lottery number) and thank you for your wise observation today. When will we ever learn?
3
G Sears
Hear! Hear!
Whatever happened to the idea of the military "standing down" after an overseas conflict? We need to de-escalate the entire concept of an (active) standing army and neutralize the entire military industrialized complex.
21
its too late Jerry. the powers that be will keep us in a permanent state of war. it's good for them in too many ways to pivot. only instituting an active draft in support of another stupid war would have a prayer at stopping this sorry mess. in trying to analyze the depressed state of our country, I wonder if this excessive militarism explains some of it? we sure aren't made happy by all this. loud yes, in our faux patriotism, but contented, secure, confident? NOT.
10
" standing down"is a sure recipe for totalitarian domination. Do you people ever study history?
As Ken Burns' documentary pointed out, 5 presidents lied for self-serving political reasons when they knew the odds of "victory" were slim and none. The lies continue to this day but has been transformed into an undeclared war on unspecified "terrorists". The only thing that keeps public opinion at rest are the continued lies about fighting for democracy and determination to reduce American casualties to a few. Unfortunately, reduction of casualties among civilians continues as our proxies in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan continue to keep our arms merchants happy.
26
And Ken Burns pulls a lot of punched, for example reference to the many Mai Lais documented from DOD studies by the meticulous Nick Terse.
5
There's no longer any pretense under Trump et. al of fighting for democracy, and maybe that's not such a bad thing. But the lies persist. And they go right down into the grain of everyday american life. I should say, way of life. Not withdrawing from Vietnam when everyone knew it was not only a lost cause, but an immoral one, was a fairly simple matter of upholding debunked doctrine (e.g., domino theory) or a sickening notion of masculinity that suggested never backing down or retreating. More than one president during this absurd war didn't want to be tarred as 'unmanly.' Imagine.
1
Don't discount the fact that we no longer have the draft and have as many contractors on the ground as members of the military.
Reading this series makes me sad and angry. So much loss of life for nothing. And how is it that the lessons learned were not applied to Iraq and Afghanistan? And now Syria, and in the future Iran and then North Korea (again)... Is this really who we are?
28
Yes.
11
yes, this "really is who we are." perhaps your question should be the thesis statement for a ken burns style documentary. Michael Moore are you listening?
9
Depends who is meant by 'we'. Political and economic elites: yes. This is who they are. Send tens of thousands of children to slaughter for their political and economic interests. The electorate? I don't know. We are lied to so so easily and so often that its hard to discern what we are voting for.
2
This blunt assessment has the ring of truth about it. Col. Beard's statement applies now as it did then. But who is listening? The US has gone on to become cop o' the world ma and the flames keep rising. I doubt I'll ever know what would happen if we would just stand down.
13
This is the Vietnam war my veteran friends remember. They were late stage draftees, hoping to survive and come home. They did their time and returned beyond disillusion and addicted to heroin.
14
Don't forget the political machinations of Kissinger and Nixon which prolonged the war causing thousands of more deaths. All for political gain. It was stupid to be there in the first place. I arrived in Saigon February 4, 1968 in the midst of the Tet offensive. A little disconcerting. Home again in March of 1969. A useless endeavor. The phrase "win the hearts and minds" used frequently during that war still brings me to anger when it is used here for propaganda in Afghanistan, Iraq etc wherever we shouldn't be.
31
This piece shows how the big lie of the power brokers (we are winning, we are morally correct) when realized by the masses, can change history. We have had nothing but lies from Washington since the Watergate scandal and now those lies have broken our country to the point that the ultimate liar was elected president.
No one believed it could get worse so they pulled the lever for lying Republicans and Trump.
There is an opportunity to make a correction in November.
41
LBJ's escalation in Vietnam was a sin and all for nothing. His ego would not allow him to admit defeat and leave Vietnam when the writing was on the wall. Now we have another president who is ruled by his ego, not by rational thought. God help us.
20
To paraphrase the Bard:
"Out, out, brief candles! Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Those troops would have died later anyway." - And many Vietnam Vets did, thanks to the idiots who ran our government, lied to all of us, and let the bleeding flow far too long.
Maybe we ought to mind our own national messes and stay out of conflicts we don't intend to win. Leave the "annililate" to others, and help with the "rehabilitate." That young marine had half of it right.
15
With all due respect to soldiers who served, when will we get real with ourselves, our culture, and with our country? What really "broke America" is the ugly, relentless, masculine immaturity that allows (and continues to allow) weak minds to pursue, engage in and glorify war.
Its little, spoiled rich boys in suits duping little, unquestioning poor boys in fatigues to go out and steal stuff, bloodshed and treasure be damned.
36
As a conscript, taken in mid 1968, and also someone who's doctor wrote him
a note about a heart murmur, I would really like to know where Trump went for
his consultation with a military doctor. There should be verifying x-rays somewhere. When I went, they were taking the oldest first. Not a good move as far as morale is concerned. We already knew to much. I read Catch 22 twice while I was in country. After I returned home I read "Fire in the Lake", "The best and the brightest", and, later the wonderful "A bright shining
lie". I have really tired of "Thank you for your service." I fought tooth and nail not to enter the service, and, as stated before, all of us just wanted to make it through our year. If only I thought of imaginary bone spurs.
70
Great that you guys got to have a rinse and repeat of this in Iraq.
10
I have been so impressed with my viewing experiences of Vietnam. "Someone Feed Phil' has a fantastic episode on Saigon's happening food scene. Of all the places he takes me to, Vietnam is the bright shining star of the future. So youthful, so happy, so hopeful for the future.
I also follow a young man who has a rocking $300 a month apartment in Hanoi, and he showed me the celebrations when Vietnam beat Qatar in soccer. What a vibrant community!
1
More accurately, it should have been "Let some other people do the Rockefellers' dirty work."
5
Donald Kirk's piece is nothing new. What purpose it serves is beyond me.
It was a war in which we should not have been involved. It destroyed a part of America. We have since recovered and thus this article serves no purpose.
4
Recovered? What country are you referring to?
14
Recovered? You obviously haven't been paying attention.
21
We hopefully learn from history so we won't be " doomed to repeat it..."
2
As one whose 2-S deferment transitioned to 1-A in April of 1969 I readily concur with the author. By February every thinking young man knew there were two distinct wars in Vietnam, the one before Tet and the one after. The Tet Offensive exposed the blatant lies by our politicians and military leaders. We draft-age men learned that we were simply fighting and dying to keep the President in office! As Eisenhower told us, a democracy can only win wars when the nation's collective spirit supports and believes the cause is just. We need to go back to the days of the draft and our citizen soldiers who knew the truth.
41
And in the name of all that is just and decent about America, let us draft women as well as men! Take young mothers along with young fathers. Let parents watch the flag-draped coffins holding the shattered bodies of their daughters -- not just their sons -- be rolled out of airplanes.
War demands we sacrifice our best and brightest, the optimistic kids who are the future of this country. We must make sure that ALL Americans realize the horrendous cost of conflict for the sake of the wealthy and powerful who declare war to burnish their reputations and boost their bottom lines.
16
Most of the deaths of those of us murdered by our admittedly failed policy were yet to come. Broke us? Hardly. Draft notices were in the mail.
2
The author seems to mourn for the pre-Tet days when soldiers silenced their thoughts, crisply saluted and discharged their duties like Prussian robots.
I doubt the author's accuracy in contending that prior to Tet most US troops were optimisitic about the war. Neal Sheehan -- a noted anti war journalist -- had been a very gung ho, anti Communist hawk, but upon arriving in Vietnam, it was apparent to him that our policy was disastrous: The S Vietnamese Army did not want to fight, the S Vietnamese govt. was bereft of popular support, and we Americans were perceived as the successors to the French, a European colonizing power thwarting the peoples' freedom. And, from the start, GI's met a hostile people and knew we weren't fighting for the people.
Tet erupted immediately after the establishment embarked on a popularity offensive for the War: Westmoreland and LBJ told us that we could see the light at the end of the tunnel and that the insurgency was on the verge of defeat. And then dozens of outposts -- according T White in "the Making of the President, 1968, 500 towns, villages and army camps -- were all attacked in the early morning hours of January 31.
Revisionists argue that the VC lost Tet badly and that America lost the war because of the anti war movement, just as German Nazis claimed that anti war Germans led to Germany's defeat it WW1. Nonsense. Immediately after Tet, the military wanted 200,000 more troops.
14
The Vietnam war under Lyndon B Johnson became too true real as Walter Cronkite broadcast the American body-count every night on CBS News. Demonstrations across America and Europe became impossible to ignore as Hanoi Jane visited Hanoi. US technology could not defeat a highly motivated enemy arriving by tunnels. Today American tourists visit Vietnam as if the war never really happened. We owe a debt of gratitude to Daniel Ellsberg for his PENTAGON PAPERS revealing the Vietnam war based on a tissue of lies. One could say the same about the 2003 Iraq invasion as promulgated by the war-lobby. Perhaps most Americans are not willing to concede that point yet on how preemptive wars become the default setting.
38
And that body count became a largely exaggerated figure -- as originally planned, and as distasteful as it was intended to be, counting only soldiers the U.S. military killed. THEN they started counting everyone they killed -- because they were wantonly killing unarmed, non combatants -- children, mothers, farmers, anyone who breathed.
I can still smell the tear gas from my experience at an anti-war demonstration in Washington DC in may of 1970. I also still can't part with the shoes I wore that day.
2
Walter Cronkite did not broadcast the American body count every night on CBS News. Not even once a week.
You may be aware that Daniel Ellsberg has documents new ones on what if a nuclear strike. We could kill a mere 600 million of Russians, but also the documents indicate they could several hundred millions of us. Don't worry if it happened some on this site would write how wonderful it was. One thing in 72 years I have learned and after my stint in the Marines, humans are basically very crude and stupid creatures. Jim Trautman
1
"That one had too few casualties."
Former President Richard Nixon to amanuensis Monica Crowley re: Vietnam.
4
Outrageous comment by Nixon. The quote about our young soldiers, male and female, being cannon fodder comes to mind. That, and Eisehower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex.
7
And we are still trying to police the world, "ld"t by cadet bone spurs and the right wing chicken hawks.
What is interesting to me is that a Colonel Beard would be saying end this mess in 1969; And it took until 1972 to exit.
Some of the Peace Studies people may have it right, what is the exit strategy? And who in the Military can be relied on to implement one?
We can't even find our way to "peace with honor" in our home grown war on drugs.
9
Troop anti-war sentiment predates Tet. I knew many who served in Vietnam and none of them trusted or respected the military they served. I received many letters describing drunk cadre, illogical missions, pure idiocy. Their goal was to do their jobs and stay alive, get back to the world they said. None of them thought the war was winnable pre-Tet or after Tet.
10
The stupidity of war in all its insane power, that was Tet.
We could eliminate war in a couple of generations by putting in place a real international court, with authority to charge and try all people, including leaders, of all nations.
That would have stopped the last Iraq war, and put Bush and Rumsfeld into jail. That would stop the next war of aggression in the Middle East or Africa, or wherever.
That will not happen in my lifetime. But don't call it, the lack of international law, anything but what it is, the need for a small elite band of super rich to rule over us all. And none of them were ever on the ground in any war.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
9
A futile racist waste of life and an unnecessary war of aggression thrust upon often idealistic duty-bound young men overwhelmed with false narratives of patriotic glory and promoted by self-aggrandizing corporate interests and flag-waving middle aged white men safely ensconced in their homes and offices with misplaced reminiscences of World War II. Ultimately, an unmasking of our government at its worst in its callous disregard for the lives of so many of our young.
13
The Red State--Blue State cleavage we see today crystallized during the Viet Nam war.
5
The morale is to the defense as three is to one, very simple, the morale was on the side of the North.
2
Morale among the Viet Cong and NVA varied a lot during the war. A lot of 'commies' deserted and 'rallied' to the ARVN side. Their morale was terrible after Tet. Many NVA generals were purged because they opposed Tet. Had the NVA and Cong actually faced a peasantry that would not cooperate, they might have back off. But as the Cong owned the night, any real resistance was met with bullet.
Being the next foreign invader was the first big strike against US involvement. That tag could never be shaken off.
2
Excellent article. Donald Kirk answers well several of the mistaken claims of Wiest on the same subject. Tet did affect America, and this article shows part of how it did so.
3
Grand to see Don Kirk writing--from Seoul, I imagine--on VN again. Bravo to the NYT for running this piece (and in a condition that reflects less mauling by the paper's ever hapless editors than, for example, the superb Sean Fear's recent contribution to the series).
4
Good article. I was in college during 1965-69 and became aware of the failed Vietnam war from returned vets who told me about fragging and the drugs and the futility of a war fought for nothing. This article doesn't describe the next 7 years of war under Nixon when more people died than under Johnson, but that just compounded the loss of lives. The Vietnam war was the example of 'young men died, because old men lied.
15
The disillusionment following Tet 68 had a lot of additional impetus from the other events in 1968. ML King assassinated. Bobby Kennedy assassinated. Johnson electing not to run again. The police riot at the Democratic Convention. Stack those on top of Tet's exposure of the lies from our generals and the response of the troops should hardly have been surprising.
10
In many respects, the Tet Offensive was a military disaster for the communists: They suffered 10 times more casualties than their enemy and failed to control any of the areas captured in the opening days of the offensive. They had hoped that the offensive would ignite a popular uprising against South Vietnam’s government and the presence of U.S. troops. This did not occur. In addition, the Viet Cong, which had come out into the open for the first time in the war, were all but wiped out. The media told the American people that this great victory was a defeat and helped to sway public opinion against the war. It was the start of the media fake news movement.
4
The best book about the Tet offensive has recently been published by Edwin Moise, The Myths of Tet. Everything you have listed is false, save for Le Duan's overly optimistic evaluation about a Communist uprising in cities. Here is quote: "The Communist attacks were not simultaneous.... The defeat the Communists suffered, while serious, was not so devastating either to the VC military forces or to the Infrastructure.... The cost in American casualties was much higher than reported.... The Tet offensive lasted for months not days.... The American media, even when faced with a reality much more distressing than the cheap and overwhelming victory portrayed in the myths, did not overreact and conclude that the US had been militarily defeated. The military escalated both its use of ground troops and aerial bombing." Moise's study is important because those revisionist historians, such as Moyar, still peddle the myths of Tet as proof that the war was lost in Washington and by an unpatriotic press corp in Vietnam, who distorted the American victory and paved the way for the victory of the Communists.
7
Try reading Nick Truse's book "Kill Anything That Moves," documented with military sources. It might change your view.
us army 1969-1971/california jd
I was in a Marine Corps Platoon Leaders class at Quantico, Va. during the summer of 1967. We were in training to become Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenants leading troops in Vietnam once we graduated from college in June 1968. I had my doubts about the war but I was still surprised that during the entire 10 week class the war itself was hardly discussed. No lectures from officers about stopping Communism or defending South Vietnam. Nothing about fighting for our country. Not even anything about upholding the honor of the Marine Corps.
The lieutenant in charge of our training platoon seemed never to leave his office. Rumor had it that he was against the war so that was why we never saw him. Our day-to-day training was conducted by two drill sergeants, one white and one black, both recently back from Vietnam. They did all the traditional hazing the Marine Corps is known for, although without any real malice or spirit.
They didn't mention the war except a couple of times when they wanted to emphasize the importance of learning what they were teaching us. They explained that if we didn't there was a good chance that when we got over to Nam our platoon would discover that what WE didn't know might get THEM killed. If that happened they might decide to roll a grenade into our tent one night so they could get someone who might know what he was doing. "Fragging,"they called it. I think they were sincerely trying to be helpful. This was almost a year before the Tet Offensive.
23
Their fun with me was ripping and making me make my bed over and over for hours on end. I never could make a good hospital bed, so I never unmade it. After I was married (47 years) my wife never had me make a bed. I joined so no complaints to many John Wayne movies when I was a kid. The sgt who had me sign the recruitment papers sent me a letter a couple of months later saying he had left the Corps. if he reenlisted they needed seasoned guys who had been there before to go over. He figured that his luck had made one tour, but probably not another. Nice guy also told me where he lived and if I was ever in the area to let him know and we could have beers and a BQ. Almost like he felt guilty.When you look at those images from way back when it is the vacant look one developed and how after awhile knowing it was meaningless and not really caring anymore. Also so many for the rest of their lives believing that you were living on borrowed time. My cousin was a flyer who flew out of Thailand and came back to clean sheets, air conditioning, great meals and table linen. Jim Trautman
Tet turned the public against the war, but many young men who had no interest in the military had long before turned against the draft and the war. The ones that supported the war did so out of a misplaced pride and the belief that America couldn't possibly have made a mistake. Is there anyone now who thinks it was not a mistake?
3
Frankly, TET had no effect on my views that the US had no business being there, and that essentially one or two PT boats attacking the US destroyer made no sense (the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident) or it met those nva were so fearless that nothing short of killing all them would work, both theories supported my view..
you might want to read Nick Turse's book "Kill Anything That Moves."
1
I remember being taken aback, when I heard a fellow soldier say "It's not MY war.". After a few months in Viet Nam in 1968, I found out it wasn't mine, either. When even the Vietnamese who were nominally on our side, told us that Ho Chi Minh was a great patriot, and that Viet Nam would be better off if we left, you had start doubting what Americans had been told in the propaganda.
24
I remember watching the first draft lottery on TV. In the group I was with, there were multiple people who had not followed their career desires and instead had pursued careers that would have kept them out of Nam - from dentists to teachers. As my Dad had been a college administrator and had a lot of student employees, I had seen these stories for years. In college I dealt with several fellow students who had PTSD from the war.
I still think back and reflect on all the lives that were forever changed, and a lot not for the good, because of that war. Unfortunately we don't seemed to have learned much when one sees the continued war mongering that goes on today.
22
Excellent article. For me one of the principal tragedies of the Vietnam War was the role played by public opinion in the United States. The widespread support for the war got us into the conflict. No American politician could be seen or heard to advocate steering clear of Vietnam in the late 1950s or early 1960s. But it was public opinion, reflected by the common soldiers in this article, that eventually soured America on the conflict. LBJ lied about the war because he did not want to be seen as the first US president to preside over a defeat, but for quite a while most Americans agreed with him.
14
"No American politician could be seen or heard to advocate steering clear of Vietnam in the late 1950s or early 1960s. "
Actually, in 1963, the decorated WWII bomber pilot, George McGovern, who knew something about the suffering of people in wars, said on the floor of the US Senate:
"The current dilemma in Vietnam is a clear demonstration of the limitations of military power ... [Current U.S. involvement] is a policy of moral debacle and political defeat ... The trap we have fallen into there will haunt us in every corner of this revolutionary world if we do not properly appraise its lessons"
63
Senator McGovern was a patriot. One might add to the list of those whose voices were raised in that era that of the late Townsend Hoopes, the former Under Secretary of the Air Force, who in 1969 published "The Limits of Intervention: How Vietnam Policy was Made--and Reversed--During the Johnson Administration" Hoopes' message was a clarion call to more than a few like me in those years and still rings true.
3
This article overestimates the importance of a single campaign. Plenty of grunts were getting bummed out about that war even before Tet. It didn't take drugs to take a look at what we were trying to do there and then believe in the mission. Other vets of my acquaintance felt the same way.
Ho's long game was going to prevail no matter what. This was obvious by 1967, but the big boys in DC and the Pentagon decided to keep bombing for six more years.
I didn't serve over there, but every Vietnam vet I know spoke of the enemy with great respect. Today's Vietnamese also act with candor and forgiveness when meeting Americans from that era. There are now fewer countries that the military and weapons lobby can tempt us to invade. Let's call that a win, and use it to mellow out the equal horrors that we are enduring today out of Washington, D.C.
45
Ho had no long term game plan.
Ho had handed power in North Vietnam to Le Duan in 1960.
Duan was determined to conquer South Vietnam no matter
how many North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese had to die -
save his own children whom he sent to Moscow for their education.
2
Aren't you forgetting that the South Vietnam elite also sent their youth out of country to avoid the war, so some American draftee took their place, perhaps even from Idaho? A similar situation could be found here where draft deferments were widespread for the elites. Think Trump, as an example.
11
Don Alfonso,
I only pointed out that Le Duan was the cause of the war.
But he took care to keep his children away from the war
while demanding that the North Vietnamese give up their
children to be slaughtered in the futile Tet Offense and
two more offenses that failed in 1968. His later economic
plans for the United Vietnam made people's lives even
worse.
Why America had deferments for those who did not
medically or morally deserve them is another question.
That South Vietnam's elites took care of their own is
old news, have they not always around the world.
Before we send anyone to war again, let us send
the children of the our Congressmen/President/Vice President/Suprem Court Justices out on the front lines
as they are the ones who plunge us into war again and again.
1
The tendency of government officials, whether military or civilian, to blame the press or antiwar demonstrators for defeat in the Vietnam war reflects, in part, the all too human habit of blaming others for one's own failures. Additionally, however, Presidents Johnson and Nixon, along with their generals, had to cope with the unenviable reality that they would appear in history books as the first group of American leaders to lose a war. President Johnson, in fact, apparently committed troops initially to avoid that distinction.
America has fought wars for a variety of reasons, some defensible and some not, but Vietnam may have been the first in which a major factor in the decision to intervene centered on a president's need to avoid political disgrace. Even after he agreed to negotiations, Johnson remained determined to achieve a favorable outcome in the conflict. But the soldiers surely sensed that politics, not national security, determined government policy. Hence the loss of morale and the determination to survive at all costs.
Johnson's attempt to preserve his own political power at the expense of other men's lives contributed instead to his own downfall, and justifiably so.
75
Johnson had seen the Republicans in Washington eviscerate the Democrats for "losing" China and, later, Korea. He felt he had to win in Vietnam to ensure the survival of his Great Society programs -- the voting rights and medicare acts that were his proudest accomplishments, the universal health care he hoped would follow. He was pinning his hopes to a star that could not win -- we could not conquer Vietnam. He tried to convince the country this meant the fall of Asia to communism. He convinced himself.
8
And Nixon, prolonging the war for political ends after Johnson.
9
Nixon sabotaged Johnson's peace talks atthe end of 1968 in his effort to win the Presidency. And now that dirt is comin out.
Shame on Nixon.
14