Aiming to win back support from the American’s, as many people did not support the Vietnam war due to the bad media that was publicised. This was the first War to be so publicised and it shocked many of the people back home. This lead to Anti-War protest, which became one of the US governments aims to stop. However they still stuck to the aim to try and contain Vietnam from the spread of communism and supporting the SV defeat the VC in nearby country Cambodia. On the other side the aims of the NV government and their terrorist organisation the VC did not alter as they still aimed to persuade the SV government to vote for Vietnam to become a communist country.
The misconceptions and false interpretations the press portrayed through television, news papers, and photographs played a major roll in shaping the support the US military had from its own people. Many contributors, such as Walter Cronkite and Edward Adams, of the press damaged the support of the US people due to bias, negative, and misconstrued interpretations of the Tet Offensive. The media portrayed Tet as a North Vietnamese victory, which countered Westmorland’s portrayal of Tet and made US citizens doubt Johnson’s previous statements made regarding the war in campaigns before Tet. The media affected the American public’s opinion of the war in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive to a great
He announced his plan of “Vietnamization” which was a strategy which replaced American troops with Vietnamese troops. Vietnamization was supposed created so that the responsibility of the war would fall into the hand of South Vietnam. It allowed American troops to return home slowly. In the same year, President Nixon had planned to secretly bomb Cambodia with an effort to eliminate the Communist camps that were present over there. In 1970, troops started to invade Cambodia which infuriated people because Nixon had promised peace.
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).
In a CBS special, Cronkite concluded, "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past, to say we are mired in a bloody stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion" ( Hallin, 1986, p.170) This did not help increase the support for our troops in Vietnam. The overall support for the war was diminished by Cronkite's report. The negative coverage of the war influenced politicians, the public, and the American soldier. Concerned with losing support, politicians started to really get involved. The TeT offensive was a last ditch effort for the communists.
The failure of foreign policy in the years 1514-1525 can be attributed to many things. The combination of Henry's isolation from European affairs and the fact that his attempts to raise tax were ultimately unpopular failures, meant that he had no way to impose himself upon Europe. Even when he did manage to scrape together the finances needed for a strong foreign policy his reliance on his allies led to disaster. As soon as Henry took the throne in 1509, it was obvious that he was a king that wanted to fight a war. However, wars generally led to very expensive costs to the country.
Fortunately, American forces were able to repel the NVA attack and inflict heavy losses on the viet-cong, but while also taking loses themselves. This tet offensive showed America that it was perhaps in a war that it was not bound to win. Due to the heavy losses of the NVA and viet-cong, President Nixon from 1969 to 1974 was able to begin troop withdrawal and the process of vietnamization. This process of vietnamization meant that there were huge American withdrawals from the north as well as a massive effort to train the south Vietnamese army so they could defend themselves. This whole process finally was at its end on April 29th 1975, with the famous televised withdrawal of the embassy marines form Saigon and the famous footage of helicopter being pushed over the side of a U.S. carrier to make room for
President Nixon's Watergate scandal only seemed to fortify this distrust. Congress, in an effort to prevent another conflict like Vietnam in the future, passed the War Powers Act. This stated that Congress had to be informed that troops would be into possible combat situations, and had to take action of those troops within 60 days (Schulzinger, 1999). It would seem as though the Vietnam War and all of the battles our nation had to endure at this fragile moment in history would help define our nation. The United States was torn in many factions at that time period, Civil Rights Movement being a major one.
During the years of 1969-1974, when Richard Nixon was president of the United States, our country went under some challenges; that changed country in a whole new perspective. Richard Nixon has had many outcomes that had positive and negative outcomes on political and economic society. One of the major aspects during Nixons' presidency is the Vietnam War. This war was an international challenge for the US mainly. A reason Nixon was elected for president in 1969 was because his campaign was all about Vietnamize the war.
The hawks and doves were complete opposites, the hawk’s argument concluded that America must win the war in Vietnam in order to contain communism in Southeast Asia and preserve the nation’s prestige (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stroff, 2005). The doves on the other hand wanted the conflict in Vietnam ended immediately and the troops returned home. The political and social outcomes facing the United States because of the conflict in Vietnam ranged from a growing distrust of the decisions being made by the political leaders to the ever increasing cost of the conflict in Vietnam. The growing distrust helped to fuel the student unrest because the younger generation decided to voice their opinions and take a stand for those