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
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.
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.
On October 31, 1968, President Johnson announced a complete halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. On November 5, Nixon is elected President with Gerald Ford as his vice-president. (Leone 138) On March 15, 1969, Nixon found out that the Vietcong were hiding in Cambodia, so he ordered the immediate bombing of these sanctuaries, but because he was bombing sanctuaries, it was never released to the American public. (Prados 193) In May of 1969, American soldier commitment was at its peak at 543,000, also during May, President Nixon announced his first major troop withdrawal and pledged to replace the Selective Service Act with a lottery. In June Nixon announced that twenty-five thousand U.S. troops would be withdrawn and replaced by South Vietnamese soldiers.
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).
It was only a few days until the NLF troops had been beaten back and the American troops once again occupied Saigon and their own embassy. The Americans were not Militarily defeated, in actual fact defeating and killing 58,000 north Vietnamese troops (Wiest, 2008) however this attack is ranked high above others as the start of the downward spiral that ended the war. Despite the offensive by the North Vietnamese forces the standoff had not changed anything, Lawrence in, the Vietnam War a concise international history, claims it “merely changed the nature of the stalemate” and that the Tet offensive was “confirming opposition to the war among American public.” (Lawrence, 2008 P116). The North Vietnamese forces being able to take and hold the supposed hub of American power in Saigon, to then have the image of the Vietcong on the roof waving the flag of the opposing army is crushing blow to the American public. This Kind of image and media brought about the anti war movement that believed the war was a ‘quagmire’ and needed to be
Television during the Vietnam War exposed the brutality of the war and brought it into American living rooms. 18. The primary goal of the protest movement of the 1960s was to end war in Vietnam. 19. The Vietnam War caused the US to distrust the government.
How effective were the US tactics of ‘search and destroy’ and ‘defoliation’ in the Vietnam War As North Vietnam came to communism the USofA soar this as a threat agent’s capitalism. And if Vietnam “fell” in to communism then the hole of Asia could become communist this is called the “domino effect”. In this time President Kennedy had ‘advisers’. The US were fully involved in Vietnam in 1964 the 4th of august when the NN North torpedoed the USS Maddox in the gulf of Tonkin and the Paris treaty in 1973 followed by the fall of Saigon 1975. Due to the Vietcong’s strategies the US decided to bomb the north into surrendering.
The American policy of containment was in tatters. It had failed militarily. The war had shown that even America's vast military strength could not stop the spread of Communism. The US had lost its first war in History. It had also failed politically.
However it would have had a tremendous and awful impact on the United States society as it did represent the war as evil and criminal. The US Army always denied that the bombs they let off never hit civilian casualties; they stated that there was not many of them. The journalist's reports broadened, which was still furthering the credibility gap'. This is the state or condition of being dissimilar or unlike between the American military and government and what the American people had confidence in. The broader the gap is, not as much the people will believe.