1 янв 1968 г. - Tet offensive

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Tet offensive: Major campaign of attacks launched throughout South Vietnam in January 1968 by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. A major turning point in the war, it exposed the credibility gap between official statements and the war’s reality, and it shook Americans’ confidence in the government





The Vietnam War was a guerrilla war, fought in skirmishes rather than set-piece battles. Despite repeated airstrikes, the United States was never able to halt the flow of North Vietnamese troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which wound through Laos and Cambodia. In January 1968, Vietcong forces launched the Tet offensive, a surprise attack on cities and provincial centers across South Vietnam. Although the attackers were pushed back with heavy losses, the Tet offensive revealed the futility of American efforts to suppress the Vietcong guerrillas and marked a turning point in the war.

On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong unleashed a massive, well-coordinated assault across South Vietnam. Beginning on the Vietnamese new year holiday known as Tet, the offensive struck thirty-six provincial capitals and five of the South’s six major cities, including Saigon, where the Vietcong nearly overran the U.S. embassy. In strictly military terms, the Tet offensive was a failure, with very heavy losses for the attackers. But psychologically, the effect in the United States was devastating. Television brought into American homes shocking live images: the American embassy under siege and, in a grim testament to the casual brutality of war, the Saigon police chief placing a pistol to the head of a Vietcong suspect and executing him.

The Tet offensive made a mockery of official pronouncements that the United States was winning the war. Could an enemy truly on the verge of defeat mount such a large-scale, complex, and coordinated attack? Just before Tet, a Gallup poll found that 56 percent of Americans considered themselves “hawks” (supporters of the war), while only 28 percent identified with the “doves” (war opponents). Three months later, doves outnumbered hawks 42 to 41 percent. Without embracing the peace movement, many Americans turned against the war after simply concluding that it was unwinnable.

Johnson’s war policies were effectively discredited. As the 1968 presidential primary season got under way in March, antiwar senators Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Robert Kennedy of New York both announced they would challenge the incumbent Johnson for the Democratic nomination. On March 31, a discouraged and fatigued LBJ stunned the nation by announcing that he would not seek reelection.

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