Which of the following was a consequence of the tet offensive?

For those of us of a certain age, today conjures up a sad and unforgettable memory. Forty-four years ago, an American house of cards collapsed in Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, shattering an American illusion of global omnipotence. In what came to be called the “Tet Offensive,” Communist forces over-ran an over-confident U.S. force of over 500,000 troops, busting into the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and occupying a string of provincial capitals throughout the country.

General William Westmoreland, at the time the U.S. commanding general in South Vietnam, requested an additional 206,000 troops, promising that with them he could assure President Lyndon Johnson that he would not only beat back the Communist offensive but also destroy their war-making capacity. Johnson, by this time tired of such assurances and pressed to come up with a negotiated end to what seemed an endless war, refused the general’s request—the first time he had ever done that. Still, even without the additional forces, Westmoreland managed to lead a successful counter-offensive, killing tens of thousands of Communist troops and severely weakening their military position.

But, for Westmoreland and the United States, it was too late. The Tet offensive gave the Communists an overwhelming propaganda victory. It undermined America’s credibility; more damaging still, it ignited the feeling among war-weary Americans that no matter how many troops the United States sent to South Vietnam, the Communists would eventually win. It was time to end the war. Johnson started negotiations with North Vietnam and announced he would not run for re-election. The war, more than anything else, defeated Johnson. He had often described North Vietnam as a “raggedy-ass little fourth rate country,” but it inflicted the first military defeat on the United States, arguably the world’s most powerful nation.

It should not be a surprise then that the Vietnam War has had a powerful effect on every subsequent president, from Ford to Obama, whenever he is faced with a decision to put “boots on the ground” and to commit troops to war. Vietnam has profoundly changed the way presidents decide questions of war and peace. Because Vietnam always seemed to have a seat in the Oval office, questions that could have been sidestepped must now be confronted. How can a president avoid another Vietnam? Should a president commit troops to war only when the nation’s “national interests” are directly involved? Must a president have an “exit strategy” before committing troops? Should a president use overwhelming military force—getting in and out of a conflict quickly? Or, should he, like presidents Reagan, Carter and Clinton, jump through hoops to avoid sending American troops to wars?

These are not easy questions; nor are there easy answers. When confronting such post-Vietnam challenges as terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, presidents have found themselves haunted by the “ghosts of Vietnam,” as though, magically, in the entrails of a lost war, they may yet find a solution to their current problems.

Barack Obama, who was 13 years of age when the Vietnam War ended finally in 1975, often seems obsessed by Vietnam. He tries to convey the impression that he has risen above Vietnam into a new, modern world when in fact he is still mired in the legacy of this lost war. In his decision making with respect to Afghanistan, for example, he is still shadowed by the “ghosts” of Vietnam. From all indications, he is tired of the war, no longer sees it as a “war that has to be won,” as he used to proclaim repeatedly, but is increasingly trapped in a military and strategic conundrum without end. According to one report, his own military intelligence experts believe that once American forces leave at the end of 2014, the Taliban will almost certain to return to power.

Poor Mr. President. He ought these days to go back to the history books and reread the chapter on the Tet Offensive. It contains important lessons that can be applied to his Afghan dilemma.

The United States dispatched combat troops and large amounts of war materiel to South Vietnam in March 1965 to fight the Communists of North Vietnam. The Vietnam War ended with the Communist takeover of the entire country. The role of the American news media in reporting the events of the war has been examined by scholars ever since. The manner in which the media reported the Tet Offensive of January to August 1968 has been of particular interest, as some argue that the media contributed to defeat in the war and helped unseat an American president.

Antiwar sentiments were first expressed in "teachins" held at the University of Michigan in March 1965, and other student bodies soon followed suit. Many parents of draft-age students also opposed the war. By late 1967, the United States had over 500,000 military personnel in South Vietnam and the immediate vicinity. Many Americans who questioned the war took a keen interest in the media's accounts of the action. Journalists reporting for the television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), the New York Times, Newsweek, and other segments of the U.S. news media presented a view of the war some found at odds with what the government said was happening. However, despite the burgeoning antiwar movement, Americans at that stage of the war generally backed the government's handling of it.

In fall 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson spearheaded "Operation Success," a public relations campaign designed to convince the public that America's combined military and rural pacification efforts were winning the "hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese people. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated there was a "light at the end of the tunnel," that the war was in fact being won. The media initially supported this outlook by consistently composing stories of American successes with titles such as "Hard-Charging U.S. Marines Swept Up Hill 881 Today." The Tet Offensive in early 1968 marked a change in the media's approach to reporting on the war.

On January 31, 1968, in the late evening, about 84,000 People's Army of Vietnam soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas attacked South Vietnamese government offices in Saigon, thirty-four provincial capitals, and seventy-one district seats. This surprise action became known as the Tet Offensive, as it occurred during Tet, the Vietnamese new year. Tet, however, was no military victory for the Viet Cong. In fact, it was a massive defeat for the Communists, as their North Vietnamese cadres were decimated by counterattacks by the United States and its South Vietnamese allies. As a result, the Communists drastically reduced their guerrilla activities and stepped up the movement of regular troops from the north. Despite being a defeat for the Communists, Tet forever altered the American news media's perception of the war, a sea change that may have also changed how the public viewed the conflict.

Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor and the country's most respected newsman, had been in favor of the Vietnam War from the beginning. However, after Tet,

he began publicly to doubt the feasibility of winning. Upon reading a teletype summary of the original attacks, he was reported to have exclaimed, "What the hell is going on? I thought that we were winning the war!" On the CBS radio show Dimension on February 6, Cronkite voiced the opinion that Johnson was "a prisoner of his own policy and a captive of his advisers." He went on to ask, "can we, as a nation, face up to the prospect of an overwhelmingly costly and bitter Asian war?"

Americans at home were bombarded with other messages from the media suggesting that Tet was in fact evidence the Communists had enough strength and military expertise to defeat the United States. The New York Times asserted on February 1 that Tet showed the road to a "clear-cut military victory … will be longer and cost-lier" than the Johnson administration was willing to admit. The newspaper urged the administration to seek a negotiated end to the war. Newsweek stated on March 11 that Tet exposed the "utter inadequacy" of the government's war policies.

General William S. Westmoreland, Johnson's commander in Vietnam, argued in a 1981 article that the media turned the public against the war. He joined other observers before him who had claimed that negative press coverage of Tet forced Johnson to abandon his pursuit of victory in favor of a negotiated peace. No definitive evidence can be marshaled to support this conclusion. Yet it is a fact that Johnson's popularity plummeted. In the 1968 presidential primary in New Hampshire, Johnson won by only a razor-thin edge over antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy. Shortly thereafter, he decided not to seek renomination.

Tet, as reported and portrayed by the U.S. media, energized the antiwar movement, undermined the credibility of the Johnson administration, and encouraged political opposition to the president's renomination. One lesson drawn from Tet is that American support of war policies can easily change depending on society's trust in its government's word. The media coverage of Tet shows the great power of the press to influence public perceptions and political opinion toward the government.

bibliography

Braestrup, Peter. Big Story: How the American Press Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.

Burner, Todd. Making Peace with the 60s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 190–197. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Oberdorfer, Don. Tet! The Turning Point in the Vietnam War. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Turley, William S. The Second Indochina War: A Short Political and Military History, 194–197. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986.

Anthony Maravillas

See also:Johnson, Lyndon Baines; 1968 Upheaval.

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