1968 TET OFFENSIVE: The Beginning of the End for Continued U.S. Involvement in Vietnam
The Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive of 1968 The 1968 “Tet” Offensive spread out across South Vietnam between 30 and 31 January. The offensive produced shock both politically and militarily in the capital cities of Saigon and Washington D.C. The purpose of the offensive, in the extreme, was for Hanoi to cause a general uprising across the beleaguered cities of South Vietnam; a ‘popular enjoining’ of the fight by sympathetic South Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese government and her mighty ally, the United States. Sam Adams, a CIA analyst who was stationed in Vietnam at the time, believes Hanoi’s chief objective was to “jolt American public opinion right before the American elections. And in my view they succeeded in spades in doing that. [1] And at minimum, to cause chaos, sow worry and concern for South Vietnamese citizens and Americans alike, and to influence American public opinion. Surely the calculus of the North Vietnamese took into consideration the free press o
Comments
Post a Comment