The Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War :: Vietnam War Essays

The violates by commie forces inside South Vietnams major cities and towns that began around the Vietnamese new Year (Tet) of 1 February 1968 were the peak of an offensive that took place over a period of several months during the Vietnam War. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, believed the attacks to be a last throw of the dice by the losing side. The attacks that Americans dubbed the Tet Offensive were good damp of what the Communists called a General Offensive and Uprising, designed to jolt the war into a new phase. The offensive ultimately achieved the Communists aim, but at a damage many of them thought excessive.The offensive had longterm conceptual origins in Vietnams August Revolution of 1945, in which the Communistled Viet Minh had instigated popular uprisings in the cities to seize cause from a puppet administration Japan had installed forward its defeat. Two decades later, as American commitment to the antiCommunist government in Saigo n deepened in the early 1960s, the Communists looked to that earlier event for inspiration. Lacking the force power to inflict outright defeat on the American military, the Communists had somehow to destroy American confidence that limited war could eventually transport victory for the United States. By sending armed forces directly into the Souths cities and fomenting tumult there, the Communists hoped to pull down the Saigon government or facilitate the rise to power of neutralists who would demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Even if the offensive did not bring immediate victory, the Communists calculated it would allow rural forces to disrupt the pacification program, destroy the American illusion of success, and induce the United States to enter negotiations in which Hanoi could mess from a position of strength.The plan formally approved by the Communist Party political bureau in Hanoi in July 1967 accepted that American, allied, and Saigon forces constituted a much mo re formidable foe than the decrepit regime the August Revolution had toppled in 1945. The offensive therefore in reality began in September 1967, with artillerysupport assaults by the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN), supported from the North, on the U.S. combat bases located along route 9 just south of the demilitarized zone, and then with operations in the central highlands, to test American reactions. The tests revealed that the Americans would remain in defensive positions and although PAVN troops would face devastating firepower, massing for attack on these positions in remote areas could lure significant forces away from universe of discourse centers.