Author Topic: TET: Who Won?  (Read 1152 times)

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Offline TomSea

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TET: Who Won?
« on: February 24, 2020, 07:21:54 pm »
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TET: Who Won?
A North Vietnamese battlefield defeat that led to victory, the Tet Offensive still triggers debate nearly four decades later
By Don Oberdorfer
Smithsonian Magazine | November 2004

Shortly before 3 a.m. on January 31, 1968, a squad of Vietcong guerrillas blasted a hole in the outer wall of the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, gunned down two American military policemen who tried to stop them, and laid siege to the lightly defended headquarters building where the flag of the United States was officially planted in South Vietnam.

As part of a nationwide wave of surprise attacks by the Communists during the Lunar New Year—the Tet holiday—the resulting six-hour battle was militarily inconsequential. In fact, in strictly military terms, the two-month struggle known as the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the attackers. It ended with the expulsion of the North Vietnamese Army and the southern-based insurgent troops, known in the West as Vietcong, from each place they invaded.

In the theater of public opinion in the United States, however, the attacks were a great success for the North Vietnamese. Brought into the living rooms of Americans by new communications satellites over the Pacific, scenes of the carnage, particularly at the embassy, severely damaged national confidence in the war policies of President Lyndon Johnson, who was already under fire from a frustrated citizenry in a presidential election year. The dramatic developments set in train during Tet led eventually to the withdrawal of American forces and the collapse of South Vietnam.

Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/tet-who-won-99179501/
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TrustbutVerify • 6 years ago • edited

Sorry, Don, but you can't get off that easy. The "overly pessimistic" reporting you finally cop to - almost 50 years later - fed into the perception of the American public (especially politicians in DC) that the war was, as you communist source said, "a long, inconclusive war". In fact, Tet broke the back of the insurgency. If this had been accurately reported at the time - instead of all the doom and gloom from the newsroom - it is possible that the ability to reapply pressure on the NVA by the ARVN/US without the VietCong in their rear would have allowed the government in Saigon to stabilize and taken the war into the North. This is supported by the fact that the countryside in the South did NOT rise up to join the VC...it was not a popular peoples revolt. Instead, you and your brethren in the press consigned hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese to reeducation camps and death.

So, the tone of the article may well be wrong.

Quote
https://www.ichiban1.org/html/history/1965_1969_american_war/10_tet_69_counteroffensive_1969.htm

23 Feb 69    
Viet Cong attack 110 targets throughout South Vietnam including Saigon.

So, yesterday, February 23rd in history, is when the "Tet Offensive" began....I read the above article in the past. Thought I'd post it.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2020, 07:27:59 pm by TomSea »

Offline Bigun

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2020, 07:26:07 pm »
In a recent interview published in The Wall Street Journal, former colonel Bui Tin who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 confirmed the American Tet 1968 military victory:

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"Our loses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for reelection.  The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to reestablish our presence but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely.

    We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was." And on strategy: "If Johnson had
granted Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.... it was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units .... our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom .... if all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would
have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest was damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us. And the left: "Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement.

 Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and would struggle along with us .... those people represented the conscience of America .... part of its war- making capability, and we turning that power in our favor."
Bui Tin went on to serve as the editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Disillusioned with the reality of Vietnamese communism Bui Tin now lives in Paris.
------------------------------
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2020, 05:13:48 am »
Militarily? We did, hands down.

But Walter Cronkite (and others) won the propaganda war for the NVA.

To this day, I refuse to watch anything he had a hand in.
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Offline txradioguy

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2020, 05:41:07 am »
Militarily? We did, hands down.

But Walter Cronkite (and others) won the propaganda war for the NVA.

To this day, I refuse to watch anything he had a hand in.

Exactly.

I've gotten into quite the verbal tussle with some fellow military journalists who tried to assert that Cronkite was the last "honest" newsman in the media.
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Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2020, 06:53:51 am »
Exactly.

I've gotten into quite the verbal tussle with some fellow military journalists who tried to assert that Cronkite was the last "honest" newsman in the media.
Maybe he was the last honest one, but if so, that's where he lost it.
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline Bigun

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2020, 02:01:29 pm »
Militarily? We did, hands down.

But Walter Cronkite (and others) won the propaganda war for the NVA.

To this day, I refuse to watch anything he had a hand in.

Walter and his sidekick Capt'n Dan the "NEWS" man Rather.   
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline EdinVA

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2020, 02:10:54 pm »
I put most of the blame on LBJ with his lies to escalate the war and getting us so tangled up with his ROE's.
The late 60's were just a tough time given the multitude of assassinations, the war, riots, protests...  I was living in Arlington, just across the river from DC..

Offline Bigun

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2020, 02:20:21 pm »
I put most of the blame on LBJ with his lies to escalate the war and getting us so tangled up with his ROE's.
The late 60's were just a tough time given the multitude of assassinations, the war, riots, protests...  I was living in Arlington, just across the river from DC..

LBJ, Robert S. Mcnamara, and the Department of State along with their willing accomplices in the press named above.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline sneakypete

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2020, 02:42:07 pm »
Exactly.

I've gotten into quite the verbal tussle with some fellow military journalists who tried to assert that Cronkite was the last "honest" newsman in the media.

@txradioguy

"Honest" my big red ass! He was in bed with the Kennedy Klan,and was all for the war in VN when JFK got us involved. He only began to oppose it when we had a Republican President,and then he flat out lied about what was happening there.
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Offline TomSea

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #9 on: February 26, 2020, 10:16:32 pm »
@txradioguy

"Honest" my big red ass! He was in bed with the Kennedy Klan,and was all for the war in VN when JFK got us involved. He only began to oppose it when we had a Republican President,and then he flat out lied about what was happening there.

That's certainly the common impression folks have of Cronkite, @sneakypete 

I think he's been brought up here or elsewhere and yes, blamed, blamed in part for how that war went.

I don't know if other networks were any better, of course, back then, it was Huntley and Brinkley, John Chancellor (though, I'd have to check exact dates) Harry Reasoner, Roger Smith (??).

But yes, conventional thinking is Cronkite wasn't good in the most basic way I can think of it, hostile, bad. It would take some study.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2020, 10:22:33 pm by TomSea »

Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #10 on: February 26, 2020, 11:12:04 pm »
That's certainly the common impression folks have of Cronkite, @sneakypete 

I think he's been brought up here or elsewhere and yes, blamed, blamed in part for how that war went.

I don't know if other networks were any better, of course, back then, it was Huntley and Brinkley, John Chancellor (though, I'd have to check exact dates) Harry Reasoner, Roger Smith (??).

But yes, conventional thinking is Cronkite wasn't good in the most basic way I can think of it, hostile, bad. It would take some study.
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How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline sneakypete

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #11 on: February 26, 2020, 11:51:43 pm »


But yes, conventional thinking is Cronkite wasn't good in the most basic way I can think of it, hostile, bad. It would take some study.

@TomSea

And mostly be a waste of time. He's dead,Jim.

His hypocrisy will live forever,though. What makes him stand out is he was identified as "The most trusted man in America" while knowingly spreading lies for political purposes.
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Offline Fishrrman

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Re: TET: Who Won?
« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2020, 01:40:33 am »
Pete wrote:
"His hypocrisy will live forever,though. What makes him stand out is he was identified as "The most trusted man in America" while knowingly spreading lies for political purposes."

Jes' call him Walter "Duranty" Cronkite...