Meanwhile, the Defense Department fed the public artificial, often inflated tallies of weekly enemy casualties. commander who had overseen the war since 1964, declared to the American people that the conflict’s end was in sight. Soon after, General William Westmoreland, the top U.S. In a speech four months before the surprise Tet attacks, LBJ claimed “steady” and even “dramatic” progress from when he first sent substantial numbers of troops there in 1965. officials put out regarding the war’s progress.
At the same time, the most respected minds in American foreign policy concluded that a third-world army such as North Vietnam’s could never match the military superpower that had defeated fascist Germany and Japan just two decades earlier.Īnother miscalculation that set the stage for political disaster: the sunny public messaging U.S. And yet the subsequent U.S.-backed regimes there were corrupt, repressive and lacking in popular support, since South Vietnamese leaders suppressed Buddhist religious worship, rounded up anti-government critics and enriched themselves. coup that led to the assassination of South Vietnam’s leader Ngo Dinh Diem and the overthrow of his government, America in effect became responsible for the fate of South Vietnam.
history-hinged on a series of fundamental miscalculations.
(Credit: Tim Page/CORBIS/Getty Images)Īmerica’s entry into the war-one of the most chronicled stories of 20th century U.S. In subsequent days, more waves of the offensive followed.Ī devastated part of Saigon after the shelling and fighting of the 1968 Tet Offensive. In addition to the bloody fighting in the Embassy courtyard, they waged fierce attacks on strategic targets such as the presidential palace, Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Airport and the city of Hue, once a seat of emperors. Thus began the Tet Offensive, in which thousands of communist-backed Viet Cong fighters waged a series of major assaults on big cities, provincial hamlets and regional capitals across U.S.-backed South Vietnam-more than 100 locations in the first 24 hour alone. 30, 1968-the day Vietnam celebrated the lunar new year-when Viet Cong troops raced through a three-foot hole they had blown in a wall protecting the United States Embassy in Saigon. But in the eyes of millions of Americans, one thing seemed likely: It was only a matter of time before the United States, a global superpower with vastly superior military might, would prevail.
combat troops began shipping over to Vietnam in 1965 to fight the spread of communism, Americans weren’t quite sure what to make of the war playing out in jungles and rice paddies halfway across the world.
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