Siteadmin, Check users, nsTeam1RO, nsTeam1RW, nsTeam1_talkRO, nsTeam1_talkRW, oversight, Administrators
30,650
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 2:
Line 2: + + + +
According to virtually every competent observer, these forces met a sharp defeat, but American press accounts described Tet instead as a major communist victory.
Nonetheless, the Tet offensive was a turning point in the war, and the North Vietnamese were successful in altering the course of the war far beyond the accomplishments of their army. The American people were shocked that the Vietcong/ North Vietnamese Army (VC/NV A) possessed the strength to make the widespread strikes. In the public clamor that followed, President Lyndon Johnson announced a bombing halt and withdrew from the 1968 Presidential race. The policy of Vietnamization was launched, and many Americans concluded that the war was too costly to pursue. [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1978/nov-dec/bishop.html]
Nonetheless, the Tet offensive was a turning point in the war, and the North Vietnamese were successful in altering the course of the war far beyond the accomplishments of their army. The American people were shocked that the Vietcong/ North Vietnamese Army (VC/NV A) possessed the strength to make the widespread strikes. In the public clamor that followed, President Lyndon Johnson announced a bombing halt and withdrew from the 1968 Presidential race. The policy of Vietnamization was launched, and many Americans concluded that the war was too costly to pursue. [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1978/nov-dec/bishop.html]
[[James Q. Wilson]] wrote:
*In January 1968, ... Communist forces during the Tet holiday launched a major attack on South Vietnamese cities. According to virtually every competent observer, these forces met a sharp defeat, but American press accounts described Tet instead as a major communist victory. Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup later published a book in which he explained the failure of the press to report the Tet offensive accurately. His summary: "Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality."
*Even as the facts became clearer, the press did not correct its false report that the North Vietnamese had won. When NBC News producer Robert Northshield was asked at the end of 1968 whether the network should put on a news show indicating that American and South Vietnamese troops had won, he rejected the idea, because Tet was already "established in the public's mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat." [http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009203]
[[Category:History of Vietnam]]
[[Category:History of Vietnam]]
[[Category:Vietnam War]]
[[Category:Vietnam War]]