Tet Offensive In The Vietnam War

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Causes and Effects of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War When asked about the United States’ involvement in Vietnam Charles de Gaulle responded by saying, “I predict that you will, step by step, be sucked into a bottomless military and political quagmire” (Wills 29). The Vietnam War should have been negotiated to an end, and troops removed directly following the Tet Offensive, because by that time, it was made evident that further fighting would only cause more unnecessary harms. Often in history nations try to justify their actions any way they can whether they are valid or not. Vietnamese intervention was reasoned to be necessary because of the possible implications of the domino effect. Just as it happened in Eastern Europe,…show more content…
Protest occurred even before the Tet Offensive in both the United States and Vietnam. Vietnamese protests were headed primarily by Buddhist monks in opposition to the war. In one shocking occurance, “on June 11, 1963, Quang Ngai set himself on fire as a protest against the policies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Several others followed his example” (Wills 44). Because the American government openly supported the Christian Diem, the South Vietnamese were almost as against American involvement as the North Vietnamese by the time of the Tet Offensive. The Americans’ failure to keep the North Vietnamese at bay only added further tension between the United States and the people they were trying to help. Back in the U.S., protest was growing to the point that full engagement in Vietnam was becoming difficult. Opposition to the draft was an extremely crucial form of protest. Literally, “tens of thousands fled to Canada or Europe to avoid the draft” (Wills 29). The burning of draft cards became a symbolic way to oppose the war. However, there were also numerous conventional protests. Kent State is what many people think when asked about protest in the Vietnam War. On May 4, of 1970 four students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen in an attempt to quell opposition on the campus of Kent State University. From the perspective…show more content…
Vietnam was only the second war to feature desegregated units, having followed the Korean War of the 1950s (Armstrong). The new challenges that soldiers faced led to an inevitable division between races. Fragging was a common way for soldiers to deal with these problems. Unable to take the orders or policies of their superior officers, many resorted to murdering them. Many of the problems that soldiers had with their commanders stemmed from race, where barriers existed regardless of the beliefs a person had. Nevertheless, racial turmoil was just as prominent in the United States, where problems continued to hinder a unified American front. It all began in 1954 when a court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, overturned the doctrine of, “separate but equal,” established in another case, Plessy v. Ferguson (Murphy; Ivers). Afterwards, protests began that led to and bonded with the anti-war movement, essentially creating a single unified front. Opposition to the government was becoming an American tradition that would only escalate with the coming of the Vietnam War. Anxiety would continue to build and ultimately lead to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. On April 4, 1968 Dr. King was killed by James Earl Ray at a speech advocating for a black workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee. Immediately following his

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