The Lies of Tet

[snopes]

On January 30, 1968, more than a quarter million North Vietnamese soldiers and 100,000 Viet Cong irregulars launched a massive attack on South Vietnam. But the public didn't hear about who had won this most decisive battle of the Vietnam War, the so-called Tet offensive, until much too late.

Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes -- such as the Petraeus surge -- minimized and glossed over.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120226056767646059.html

[jimmy101_again]

The military impact of Tet depends on your point of view. In the old parlance, Tet was a tactical defeat, but a strategic victory, for the NV and VC.

It is true that the offensive was crushed, in fairly short order, hence it was a tactical loss for the communists. But, and this is probably the more important point, the American people had been told for several years by Gen. Westmoreland et al., that the communist's were on the brink of collapse. The fact that an army "on it's last legs" could mount an offensive with ~350,000 troops showed that the military and the US gov't, had either been lying, or were completely clueless as to the true military situation in S. Vietnam. (Sound familiar?)

The American people figured, and rightly so, that if the North could mount an offensive with that many soldiers, that even if the offensive was defeated, the North would be able to do it again given enough time to rebuild its forces.

Tet was crushed, but the lesson was that in a few years there would have been another Tet. If that failed also, then after another few years there would be another and so on.

There is really no way to look at Tet as anything but a military victory for the NV and VC. They were fighting an asymmetric war, and when need be, they could scale back their activities and take the time needed to rebuild. The NV and VC didn't need military victories, they only needed to be able to periodically show that they could mount a credible military force.

Tet proved that the war could, and probably would, go on indefinitely with neither side being able to claim a military victory.

[Kutter]

Well, since Tet is often called a military catastrophe for the North, I think it's pretty easy to call it less than a win.

Tet was a Hail Mary, all or nothing desperate grasp to break the stalemate in a war that was rapidly dismantling the North's economy and infrastructure. Not only did it not work, it severely diminished the North's assets in the South, including completely decimating the VC and galvanizing the people around their government. The NVA itself suffered horrible losses and accomplished not a single one of it's objectives. It was such a terrific loss that the North issued a directive to never try anything like that again.

However, Tet did sow the seeds that would eventually lead to the North's victory, so you can't call it a total loss.

Incidentally, the Battle of Mogudishu was a US win also.

[ASL]

Originally Posted by Kutter

However, Tet did sow the seeds that would eventually lead to the North's victory, so you can't call it a total loss.

Then I guess you can hardly call it a Hail Mary, can you? That typically comes at the end of the game when there is no other chance of victory. The question is, if they were so totally crushed, how did they hold out till a US withdrawal and defeat the South so totally?

[jimmy101_again]

Originally Posted by Kutter

Tet was a Hail Mary, all or nothing desperate grasp to break the stalemate in a war that was rapidly dismantling the North's economy and infrastructure.

"Rapidly dismantling the North's economy" but they still managed to launch a ~350,000 man offensive. That was the victory, just fielding a force that size was a win for the North. The military / tactical results were basically irrelevant to the strategic importance.

[noggins]

If the Tet offensive was really an american victory, doesnt that mean that it was Nixon who lost the war ?

[Sweeney_Todd]

in many wars, isn't there a last big offensive? My history is a bit fuzzy and I am to tired to research it now, but, wasn't the battle of the bulge a last big German offensive? how about Gettysburg, wasn't that a big offensive too that was lost? Don't the 'losing sides' usually have a last big offensive?

[Ali Infree]

noggins sez:

If the Tet offensive was really an american victory, doesnt that mean that it was Nixon who lost the war ?

Well, Kissinger and his North Vietnamese counter-part received the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating what was later referred to as "the decent interval" to allow more US disengagement before the final Vietnamese victory.

The OP's author used the decline in US deaths in 1969 and 1970 to show that the war was going our way. Nothing is further from the truth, the Nixon administration began its Vietnamization effort after Nixon took office in 1969 to demonstrate that our south Vietnamese allies could carry on without our direct engagment. Some US units had virtually refused to carry out offensive actions that seemed meaningless, and this refusal helped fuel the Nixon policy.

Instead of ground forces we used air power--deforestration, bombing, and mining Haiphong harbor to carry the fight to the north. Nixon also invaded Cambodia to try to reach the Ho Chi Minh Trail which sent NVA regulars and supplies south. The bombing wasn't very useful on a population that was still agrarian and placed production facilities in scattered sites.

Then Nixon and Kissinger signed a treaty virtually similar to one offered by the Vietnamese in 1968, after 20,000 more US casualties. So, yeah, I go with Nixon losing the war.

I consider General Westmoreland the person who made the Tet offensive such a PR loss. Also, there are those who think that the North Vietnamese did not want to deal with a separate powerbase in the south in the form of the Viet Cong. The VC losses may not have seemed so serious in Hanoi.

jimmy101_again is right. The Vietnamese had a strategy that worked for them. This would be a good lesson to remember in Iraq where there is some quiet now, but not, I suspect, any real peace.


Ali "remember" Infree