The Tet Offensive

[The_Professor]

The Tet Offensive

Breaking the negotiated annual truce, for surprise, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars launched the Tet Offensive, in the night of 30/31 January 1968, named for the Vietnamese lunar new year. This campaign continued in various forms through September of that year, ending in total military defeat, for the aggressors. And a brilliant propaganda victory, for the same.

Thinking back on the Vietnam War this last week. And while I was doing so, a young leftist friend wrote to me, on an entirely unrelated topic, taunting with a remark about 2008 being, ?The last year of the American Empire? -- as if it started and ended with George W. Bush. He does not seem interested in the question: By whose Empire will that vacuum be filled?

My friend does not even think of himself as a leftist, only as a person with an ?open mind.? We agree on that, but define ?open? differently, for to my mind, a skull without a brain inside is completely open. The more brain, or more precisely, the more brain used, the more resistance it can offer to the importation of nonsense.

Forty years have now gone by, which one might figuratively characterize as the forty years of the Tet Offensive, against Western Civ. The West has done fairly well in the field: we have still not lost a purely military encounter with any of the enemies of the West. Going back farther, the French didn't even lose their battles in Algeria. Rather, Charles de Gaulle decided they were not worth fighting.

The Tet Offensive was a desperate ploy by the Communist enemy in Vietnam. Tens of thousands of his troops were flung simultaneously at more than 100 South Vietnamese towns, and into the heart of Saigon. The Communists announced a general uprising, but that did not occur. The tide was actually turned within a few days by the U.S. and South Vietnamese armies. As they re-took town after town, they discovered massacres the Communists had committed while in possession. The enemy's real object had been to decapitate a whole society.

My friend, Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German Lutheran pastor and also life-long journalist, was there as a reporter. Entering Hu? as the smoke was clearing: ?I made my way to university apartments to obtain news about friends of mine, German professors at the medical school. I learned that their names had been on lists containing some 1,800 Hu? residents singled out for liquidation.

?Six weeks later the bodies of doctors Alois Altekoester, Raimund Discher, Horst-Guenther Krainick, and Krainick's wife, Elisabeth, were found in shallow graves they had been made to dig for themselves.

?Then, enormous mass graves of women and children were found. Most had been clubbed to death, some buried alive; you could tell from the beautifully manicured hands of women who had tried to claw out of their burial place.

?As we stood at one such site, Washington Post correspondent Peter Braestrup asked an American TV cameraman, 'Why don't you film this?' He answered, 'I am not here to spread anti-communist propaganda'.?

The Tet Offensive ended not only in a huge allied victory in the field -- some 45,000 of the Communist soldiers had been killed, and their infrastructure destroyed. It was victory after an event that showed sceptical South Vietnamese, and should have shown the world, the nature of the enemy our allies were fighting.

Walter Cronkite, the famous news anchor of CBS, led the American media reaction. After a very brief visit to Saigon, in which he got himself filmed wearing flak jackets, he returned to the United States, declaring before his huge prime time audience:

?It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honourable people who have lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."

The media turned a tremendous victory into a tremendous defeat. Yet seven more years would pass until an America, which had by then abandoned Vietnam, and a Congress, which had cut off military supplies to the South Vietnamese, watched the helicopters removing America's last faithful servants from a roof in Saigon's old embassy compound. The South Vietnamese Army had surrendered, to another Tet Offensive, as it ran out of ammunition.

We have seen this ?Vietnam syndrome? writ large, through the intervening years. We see it today in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Romans, too, had a facility for winning ground battles.


David Warren
? Ottawa Citizen

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=841

[hnumpah]

We see it today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Seems to me we wouldn't see it in Afghanistan if King George had let the troops there go ahead and finish the job, rather than throwing them into his massive cock-up in Iraq.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Vietnam was the dumbest foreign policy the US ever had, until Juniorbush, who decided to try to find a rhyme for it.

If the South Vietnamese had actually wanted a democracy, they could have won. But they didn't want it enough.

The US had no business trying to foist a neocolonialist regime on Vietnam then, and has no business trying to do the same in Iraq now.

[Michael Tee]

I remember the Tet Offensive very well, and the Professor left out significant elements in assessing its significance:
1.  The U.S. invasion of Viet Nam was completely illegal and immoral, a flagrant attempt to avoid free elections in the South, which even Eisenhower had admitted would have resulted in an overwhelming electoral victory for Ho Chi Minh.
2.  Leading up to the Tet Offensive, the Amerikkkan sheeple had been bombarded with an endless campaign of bullshit about corners being turned, light at the end of the tunnel, etc.
3.  I will give you a portrait of a young university student following this all very closely - - me.  I was enraged by the slaughter, torture and flagrant illegality of the war.  Sometimes it got so bad I couldn't study, I'd call my wife or my best friend at night from the library and just try to unburden myself, sometimes for hours.  I'm sure they dreaded those conversations but there was nothing else I could do.  The endless campaign of lies and bullshit about how well the campaign was going was starting to weigh me down too - - what if they were true after all?  What if the bad guys were gonna win?

And then the news of the Tet Offensive - - really, one of the happiest days of my life, for several reasons.  One, the Amerikkkan aggressors were finally getting their fat asses kicked, and hard.  It was like that moment in the fight movie when the battered hero, lying face down on the canvas, catches a glimpse of his mother's or sweetheart's teary face, or hears again something some priest told him in his childhood, gets up on the count of nine and proceeds to beat the shit out of his evil, brutish opponent.

But even more important than the ass-kicking was another factor - - the lies and bullshit that the sheeple had been fed for so long, which had seemed to fool everyone but the students and a few enlightened folks on the left wing of the labour movement, suddenly were nakedly exposed to the sheeple  as the lies that they were.  I felt, and I think correctly, that this was the Stalingrad of the propaganda war, the moment when the tide had finally turned - - whether or not this was a great military victory for the VC (and I happen to think that it was) this was the point where the Amerikkkan sheeple finally realized that their government had been lying to them or didn't know what it was talking about.

If you ever want to understand the significance of the Tet Offensive, you should look it up in the excellent David Halberstam book, The Best and the Brightest, where Halberstam describes a meeting of the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which the Joint Chiefs are "explaining" to the President (LBJ) how nothing has changed and the President's adviser, Arthur Goldberg, is cross-examining them. 

Goldberg is first asking what the enemy troop strength had been prior to Tet, and the Chiefs come out with all this authoritative-sounding BS, well, if you count the full-time guerrillas and then if you add the local VC militia and the North Vietnamese this and that, so they come up with a number.  As if they knew.  As if they knew anything.  And then Goldberg asks them, what is the body count of dead VC from Tet, and they add up some huge number for him, to "prove" what a great Amerikkkan victory it was for them.  And then Goldberg asks them, and what's the ratio of killed to wounded for them?  And someone tells him, "We generally use a ratio of three to one."   

Then some silence, Goldberg is scribbling on a pad.  Then Goldberg announces, "Well, according to these figures, the enemy has no effective forces left in the field."  The Joint Chiefs had no answer at all.  They were too fucking dumb to have seen it coming.  They just sat there stunned, like the lying dumbasses they were and for the first time, just.  Had.  Absolutely.  Nothing.  To.  Say.  They were busted.

I think if you assess Tet as a military victory, they (a hit-and-run guerrilla army) seized and held ground, contrary to all expectations of their capacity to do so.  And when the time came to melt away, they melted away.  As a propaganda victory it was unparalleled - - it proved to the Amerikkkans that their military had been lying to them and could not be trusted.  It proved to the Vietnamese that the VC were everywhere and that collaboration with the invaders could be very damaging to one's health and well-being.  And to guys like me - - who if I had been in the States would very definitely have been an anti-war activist -- it gave an immeasurable shot in the arm, a renewed confidence that this fight could be won, that if the VC were capable of such an upset in their homeland that we in Amerikkka, fighting the Leviathan from within its own belly, had no right to give up and should renew the struggle with even more intensity.

[_JS]

I think if you assess Tet as a military victory...

And right there is your problem. In fact, right there is the problem we're having in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why is this so difficult to understand?

You can win ever battle and still lose the war.

There was no way Vietnam could beat us in a full on military engagement. Not many people can. Not the Iraqi insurgents, not the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is why those extreme right-wing militia folks that bitch about the 2nd amendment and talk about fighting federal agents are complete idiots. If you've ever seen professional infantry in action, you'll realize that a few guys who go to the range on the weekends and gun shows every two months aren't ging to be a match.

But, guerilla war doesn't work that way. There weren't many battles we didn't win in Vietnam. Yet, the ever-daunting task became - what does a victory look like? Those guys weren't dying for communism or communist principles, they were dying for Vietnam. They were nationalists who no longer accepted a foreign power occupying their country. We could not control South Vietnam - how could we ever attain a victory? As for massacres, look no further than the crap we installed to lead South Vietnam. These weren't democratic, freedom-loving, patriots! These were some of the most ruthless sons of bitches we could find, often people who were pals with the French beforehand. They were loathed by the Vietnamese, which only fueled the fire. Diem even had the police open fire on a group of Buddhist monks! So make no mistake that the inhumanity ran both ways and the people knew it.

Yet, the lesson is still there. Our victories in Vietnam were hollow and reactive. Unlike Normandy or Stalingrad, they did nothing to advance the war towards a final resolution.

Meanwhile: France, Germany, and the United States held social, cultural, and political revolutions (moreso in the former two).

[Michael Tee]

<<There was no way Vietnam could beat us in a full on military engagement. >>

You realize, of course, that Vietnam was a war of attrition.  The Amerikkkans figured that at some point the Vietnamese would get tired of the burden and lay it down.  They killed literally millions of Vietnamese for that principle.  But there were 80 million Vietnamese and behind them a billion Chinese.  (I know Vietnamese from the North, who told me that there were many Chinese volunteering to join in their struggle for national liberation - - the saying was, "When they take their shirts off, they become Vietnamese." )  There was a virtually inexhaustible reservoir of manpower to continue the fight for as long as it took.

On the Amerikkkan side as well, perhaps not fully realized when the aggression commenced, it was really a war of attrition.  There was a magic number that nobody knew - - the number of body bags coming home that would finally convince even the dumbest and most belligerent of the sheeple that enough was enough.  It turned out in the end that the magic number didn't really relate to body bags, it was more to do with currency reserves and the maintenance of the dollar's value in the forex markets.  When that number was reached, the business community, whose Cabinet spokesman was Mel Laird, gave its orders to Richard Nixon, who had no choice but to obey.  The game was over.

[Plane]

I have to hope that a system that considers its people totally expendable will eventually loose the support of its people because it doesn't deserve it.

[Michael Tee]

Too bad you can't appreciate the heroism of their sacrifices.  I suppose you think those soldiers who died on D-Day for the Allied cause were a bunch of schmucks and Ike and FDR were monsters for going ahead with it.

Sounds more like sour grapes to me.  The Vietnamese died for the liberation of their people from foreign domination.  The GIs died there for nothing.

I know which system had the least respect for the lives of its troops.

[_JS]

I have to hope that a system that considers its people totally expendable will eventually loose the support of its people because it doesn't deserve it.

A different people, different culture, different historical climate. We picked up a colonial war that the French had long abandoned. We weren't wanted in Vietnam by a vast majority of the people. They never saw us as "liberators" but as invaders. You're making a statement that simply does not apply.

The problem with the article is that it misses the entire truth of history. As I said and Mike correctly replied to, Vietnam could not win a full-on military engagement with the U.S. So, very astutely - they chose not to fight one.

The IRA could not win a set-piece battle against the British Army. Hezbollah could not win a set-piece battle against the Israeli Army. So why fight that way?

Again, you can win all the battles and still lose the war.

To use football as an analogy, I'm sure you've seen a game where a team dominates in yards and throughout the game, but still loses on the scoreboard.

[The_Professor]

Too bad you can't appreciate the heroism of their sacrifices.  I suppose you think those soldiers who died on D-Day for the Allied cause were a bunch of schmucks and Ike and FDR were monsters for going ahead with it.

Sounds more like sour grapes to me.  The Vietnamese died for the liberation of their people from foreign domination.  The GIs died there for nothing.

I know which system had the least respect for the lives of its troops.

and yet you were cheering when American forces were being beat by the Vietnemese, when American soldiers were dying for followwng orders given to them. This is really sick. I would have punched your lights out and made you eat concrete if I would have been there at the time. Americans were dying and you and people like you were cheering. I think that is disgusting. I know you don't give a hoot that I do, but sobeit.

As far as Vietnam, I could have solved the problem just like a friend of mine in the Mossad advised to American commanders at the time, namely deploy tactical nukes.

[_JS]

Too bad you can't appreciate the heroism of their sacrifices.  I suppose you think those soldiers who died on D-Day for the Allied cause were a bunch of schmucks and Ike and FDR were monsters for going ahead with it.

Sounds more like sour grapes to me.  The Vietnamese died for the liberation of their people from foreign domination.  The GIs died there for nothing.

I know which system had the least respect for the lives of its troops.

and yet you were cheering when American forces were being beat by the Vietnemese, when American soldiers were dying for followwng orders given to them. This is really sick. I would have punched your lights out and made you eat concrete if I would have been there at the time. Americans were dying and you and people like you were cheering. I think that is disgusting. I know you don't give a hoot that I do, but sobeit.

As far as Vietnam, I could have solved the problem just like a friend of mine on the Mossad advised to American commanders at the time, namely deploy tactical nukes.

And what a victory that would have been for democracy and freedom! 

Of course with that precedent, the Soviets would have done the same in Afghanistan. Yeah - the world would be a better place.

This is the same Mossad that had agents captured for murdering an innocent man in Lillehammer, Norway. Impressive.

[Xavier_Onassis]

This is really sick. I would have punched your lights out and made you eat concrete if I would have been there at the time. Americans were dying and you and people like you were cheering. I think that is disgusting. I know you don't give a hoot that I do, but sobeit.

As far as Vietnam, I could have solved the problem just like a friend of mine on the Mossad advised to American commanders at the time, namely deploy tactical nukes.

=====================================================================================
My own personal choice was to simply not go to Vietnam. Had my dodging the draft not worked out so well, I would have taken a job teaching in British Columbia.

Vietnam was an immoral war, and no American soldier -not one- had to die there, all they had to do was refuse to go.

It was the noble and patriotic thing to do, in my mind.

Eventually, the Army simply could not find enough soldiers by using the draft. They HAD to end it, because there were not enough suckers to march off to die for a stupid and misbegotten colonial war. It wasn't because of any 'treason' of Democratic senators of Congressmen, it was because of the outright rebellion of the draftees.

They don't tell you this, but that doesn't make it untrue.

As for your Mossad c*cks*cking pal, he can eat my shorts. After they had nuked the North Vietnamese until they glowed in the dark, it is entirely irrational to believe that they would have come to love murderous thieves like Thieu and Ky.

While there may have been heroic deeds committed by the US Army and Muhrines in Vietnam, they were about as moral as the equally brave deeds of the  Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in WWII. Herr Adolph was one brave little Austrian to have been awarded the Iron Cross, after all.

[Michael Tee]

<<and yet you were cheering when American forces were being beat by the Vietnemese, when American soldiers were dying for followwng orders given to them. This is really sick. I would have punched your lights out and made you eat concrete if I would have been there at the time. Americans were dying and you and people like you were cheering. I think that is disgusting. I know you don't give a hoot that I do, but sobeit.>>

That's the fate that all fascist aggressors deserve.  They invaded someone's homeland, killed over 2 million Vietnamese, laid waste the land, poisoned it with chemicals, tortured, raped and murdered all with total impunity.  Their victims were innocent children, nursing mothers, elderly peasants and of courst the Resistance fighters themselves.  God-damn right I cheered their deaths.  I'm only sorry there weren't ten times as many.  THAT'S the real tragedy of Viet Nam.  Instead of 57,000 dead Amerikkkans and 2 million dead Vietnamese, it should have been 2 million dead Amerikkkans and 57,000 dead Vietnamese.  Following their orders was no excuse.  That was just what the Nazis claimed to be doing, following their orders.  Maybe it never occurred to you that the Vietnamese were also following their orders too.

People have to understand clearly:  fascist oppressors will die, and deservedly so.  It was like that in   WWII and in Vietnam.  It's like that today in Iraq.  Maybe they'll kill more of the other side, but enough of them will die, till their government can't maintain the aggression any longer.  If they were dying in a good cause (WWII) there would be no limit to the causalties the sheeple could bear, but the sheeple know in their hearts when a cause is good and when the cheerleaders are all fulla shit.  In the latter case, they'll reach a limit of acceptable casualties sooner rather than later.

You should tone down the rhetoric of punching out lights and eating concrete.  You're starting to sound like that moron Rich.  You can start something like that but you don't know whose lights will be punched out at the end of the day.  If I can't do it, somebody else can.  Bullies always get their comeuppance, as Vietnam and now Iraq are handily demonstrating.

[The_Professor]

Well, your lack of patriotism disgusts me and/or I am simply too tired. Time to go away for a while it seems...

[Plane]

Too bad you can't appreciate the heroism of their sacrifices.  I suppose you think those soldiers who died on D-Day for the Allied cause were a bunch of schmucks and Ike and FDR were monsters for going ahead with it.

Sounds more like sour grapes to me.  The Vietnamese died for the liberation of their people from foreign domination.  The GIs died there for nothing.

I know which system had the least respect for the lives of its troops.

There was a virtually inexhaustible reservoir of manpower to continue the fight for as long as it took.

And it doesn't strike you as sad?

That the strength of their movemen is based on having no need to respond to the need of their people , that to the leadership people were just as much cannon fodder as it took to adsorb all the canon the opposition could bring to bear.

That is a "strength" we don't need even if our "weakness" cause s to loose the war in Vietnam , I would rather run the risk of loosing again than to try to develop an evil strength like that.