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

The attacks by communistic 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 everyplace 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 fair(a) part of what the Communists called a General Offensive and Uprising, designed to jolt the warfare into a new phase. The offensive ultimately achieved the Communists aim, but at a price 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 customary uprisings in the cities to seize power from a puppet government lacquer had installed before its defeat. Two decades later, as American commitment to the antiCommunist governm ent in Saigon deepened in the early 1960s, the Communists looked to that earlier event for inspiration. absent the military power to inflict outright defeat on the American military, the Communists had somehow to terminate American confidence that limited war could in conclusion form victory for the United States. By sending armed forces straight into the Souths cities and fomenting rebellion there, the Communists hoped to pull down the Saigon government or facilitate the bone up 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 capital of Vietnam could bargain from a position of strength.The plan formally approved by the Communist Party political bureau in Hanoi in July 1967 recognized that American, allied, an d Saigon forces constituted a much more formidable confrontation than the shaky regime the August Revolution had toppled in 1945. The offensive accordingly actually began in September 1967, with artillerysupported assaults by the Peoples the States 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 examination 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 aside from population centers.