Tet Offensensive, defeat out of victory.

[AFTiger 282]

Can it happen again??

Giap’s offensive failed. The “general uprising” did not occur. The South Vietnamese armed forces did not collapse or switch sides. Giap was counting on a strong operation to impress the Americans, but that did not happen either. The public reaction in the United States was a lucky windfall for the North Vietnamese. It was not because of anything Giap accomplished in the offensive.

As Giap knew all along, his forces could not defeat the United States and ARVN in open battle. A bad strategy was weakened further when Giap chose to strike simultaneously in so many locations, spreading his force too thin for effective concentration. In “Tet II” or “mini Tet” in May, Hanoi sent 80,000 to 90,000 replacement troops south for a final effort. They attacked at 119 locations but gave it up when losses reached 4,000 a week.

In the final tally for Tet, between 40,000 and 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were killed and many more wounded. The Viet Cong were thereafter reduced to a marginal role in the conflict. Le Duan’s “main force” faction lost credibility and North Vietnam returned to its previous emphasis on insurgency.

It is impossible to say what the effect of the slanted news reporting might have been if the US government had not bungled its response to the Tet Offensive. Harry G. Summers Jr., noted author of On Strategy and longtime editor of Vietnam Magazine, said that “the real reason for the debacle was the void created by President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘psychological defeat.’ His two months of inaction after Tet allowed critics to define the terms of this perceived disaster.”

The Administration’s credibility, already low when Tet began, got steadily worse. Most of what the government did and said added to the impression that a defeat was in progress. It was as if the White House and the Pentagon had set out to undermine their own case. Tet was the catalyst that prompted Lyndon Johnson’s own politicos and advisors to bail out on him.

Despite the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong losses, Tet did not change the military prospective that much. The best the US could do was to resume marching in place. Any chance of victory had been cut off years before with the decision to fight the war in the south. Tet altered the timetable but not the outcome.

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