To What Extent Has the Importance of the Tet Offensive of 1968 Been Overrated?
To what extent has the importance of the Tet Offensive of 1968 been overrated?
On January 30th 1968 over 80,000 Vietcong soldiers launched a surprise attack on over 100 towns and cities in South Vietnam. This is known as the Tet Offensive. The US army and South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) launched a counter-attack which regained all lost territory and crippled the military capabilities of the Vietcong. Some historians argue Tet was not as important as it appears to be. However, it is widely considered to be a pivotal turning point in the Vietnam War, causing the US military to change strategy to Vietnamisation, turning US public opinion against the war, and resulting in President Johnson not standing for re-election. It it provided a catalyst for change by revealing that the USA could not win, resulting in the gradual withdrawal of US troops. The Tet Offensive marked the beginning of the end of American combat forces in Vietnam.
The analysis of opinion polls from before and after the Tet Offensive demonstrate that US public support for the war had dramatically reduced, most likely as a consequence of media coverage. Before the Tet Offensive, the proportion of Americans who thought of themselves as hawks (pro-war) stood at 60%, but afterwards that number had dropped to 41% . This significant drop in public support could have resulted from the fact that the Vietnam War was the first televised war: “The scope, scale and intensity of the Vietcong Tet Offensive shocked most Americans. Nightly, television news beamed the sights and sounds…of battles…into American living rooms. ” Most Americans had not seen many images of American defeats because “initial coverage generally supported US involvement in the war.” In fact, in 1967 the US government’s ‘Victory Campaign’, which most media organisations supported, increased Johnson’s approval rating to 48%. During the Tet Offensive the US public saw graphic pictures of Americans being killed and brought home in body bags. This
On January 30th 1968 over 80,000 Vietcong soldiers launched a surprise attack on over 100 towns and cities in South Vietnam. This is known as the Tet Offensive. The US army and South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) launched a counter-attack which regained all lost territory and crippled the military capabilities of the Vietcong. Some historians argue Tet was not as important as it appears to be. However, it is widely considered to be a pivotal turning point in the Vietnam War, causing the US military to change strategy to Vietnamisation, turning US public opinion against the war, and resulting in President Johnson not standing for re-election. It it provided a catalyst for change by revealing that the USA could not win, resulting in the gradual withdrawal of US troops. The Tet Offensive marked the beginning of the end of American combat forces in Vietnam.
The analysis of opinion polls from before and after the Tet Offensive demonstrate that US public support for the war had dramatically reduced, most likely as a consequence of media coverage. Before the Tet Offensive, the proportion of Americans who thought of themselves as hawks (pro-war) stood at 60%, but afterwards that number had dropped to 41% . This significant drop in public support could have resulted from the fact that the Vietnam War was the first televised war: “The scope, scale and intensity of the Vietcong Tet Offensive shocked most Americans. Nightly, television news beamed the sights and sounds…of battles…into American living rooms. ” Most Americans had not seen many images of American defeats because “initial coverage generally supported US involvement in the war.” In fact, in 1967 the US government’s ‘Victory Campaign’, which most media organisations supported, increased Johnson’s approval rating to 48%. During the Tet Offensive the US public saw graphic pictures of Americans being killed and brought home in body bags. This
Bibliography: Books Niall Ferguson, Colossus: the rise and fall of America 's empire, Penguin Press, 2004 William M. Hammond, Public Affairs the Military and the Media, 1962-1968, Government Printing Office, 1989 George C Gary Hess, Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War, (Blackwell Pub. 2009) Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War, Simon & Schuster, 2003 Kevin Ruane, The Vietnam Wars, Manchester University Press, 2000 Jeffery Record, The Wrong War: why we lost in Vietnam, Naval Institute Press, 1998 Vivienne Sanders, The USA and Vietnam 1945-75, Trans-Atlantic Pubns, 2007 Stephen Weiss and Clark Dougan, The American Experience in Vietnam, W.W George Katsiaficas (ed.), Vietnam Documents: American and Vietnamese view of the war (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1992) Websites