Traditionally, the Vietnamese, like the Chinese, celebrate the first week of each new lunar year with a festival, or “Tet.” New Year’s Day, or Nguyen-Dan, is the most important day of the year. Nguyen-Dan varies every year and falls between the last week of January to the last week of February on the Western calendar. In 1968, the Nguyen-Dan came on January 31. There was a cease-fire of 36 hours during the Tet of 1968. Despite the cease-fire, the communists launched brutal attacks on 33 provinces, 64 districts, and 29 important military installations over four military regions in South Vietnam. Saigon, including the American Embassy, was hit during the pre-dawn hours of January 31. This communist campaign, the so-called General Offensive and General Uprising (Tổng Công-Kićh & Tổng Nổi-Dậy, or TCK & TND), or 1968 Tet Offensive, according to American historians, was the turning point of the Second Vietnam War.
The Communist Party, or the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP), launched the TCK & TND campaign after a long discussion among its Politburo members and after a long military process that had begun in the beginning of 1966. This campaign was Ho Chi Minh’s last before his death in 1969. Ho alluded to this secret war policy in his speech to the nation on Nguyen-Dan 1967. Ho called the people of North and South Vietnam to make a united effort for a new phase of war, which was assumed to be an initiation of “fighting and negotiating,” to acquire the final goals of a “victorious liberation” of South Vietnam, a complete reunification of the country, and a total realization of a beautiful Vietnamese socialist society. The VWP implemented Ho’s policy with Party Resolution 13 in July and Resolution 14 in October 1967. These two resolutions adopted the strategy of using the TCK & TND to “liberate” South Vietnam.
NVA General Nguyen van Vinh, commander of the VWP Central Office in South Vietnam (COSVN), came closest to discerning Ho’s war policy. In a meeting with staff members in April 1966, General Vinh predicted that since the United States widened the air war to the North and escalated sending combat troops to the South, the VWP and the COSVN would study American policy and strategy. In the first phase, the flexible response phase, the United States would enjoy the upper hand. In the second phase, “fighting while negotiating” would be Hanoi’s war strategy. Based on Ho’s initiative, the VWP formulated a joint military-political-diplomatic strategy to face the U.S. escalation of the war. General Vinh concluded that at diplomatic and political warfare, the Americans were unsuitable. He said: “In a war of position, they can defeat us. But with our present tactics, we will win and they will be defeated. It is the same as if we force them to eat with chopsticks. If we eat with spoons and forks like them, we will be defeated, if chopsticks are used … they are no match for us,” Vinh then explained “to defeat the enemy in the South is to basically … smash the Americans’ aggressive will … we can push the Americans out of Vietnam by coordinating the political struggle with diplomacy [make them eat with chopsticks].”1 Pushing the Americans out of Vietnam was the VWP’s primary effort, but the reunification of Vietnam was its crucial purpose. Military measures were the primary means to satisfy their political and diplomatic goals. Therefore, the communists would not stop at this phase without military victory. North Vietnam had to concentrate their efforts on offensive campaigns, among which the Tet Offensive was very important. Vinh disclosed this campaign to his COSVN staff members: “With regard to the General Offensive [TCK] and General Uprising [TND], it was requested that a concrete plan, including the quantity of weapons needed, the number of armed forces needed, etc…, be made known in order to carry out the undertaking confidently. For secrecy’s sake, it is not yet necessary to reveal information on these matters.”2
In short, NVA General Nguyen van Vinh, COSVN commander—the highest VWP politico-military authority in South Vietnam in 1966–1967—saw two ways for the communists to wage war in the South: (1) fighting and (2) negotiating. If fighting would allow them to win the final military victory, they would fight with maximum strength. If fighting would give them a moderate military victory, they might negotiate for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam. Indeed, throughout the summer of 1967, the VWP and COSVN prepared the National Liberation Front’s leaders and cadres for a “coalition government” in case “negotiations would be made and treaties would be signed” alongside preparations to undertake weighty offensive operations, before starting the decisive TCK & TND campaign of 1968.
However, according to recently disclosed documents from Hanoi, after officially adopting the TCK & TND offensive strategy in the South by issuing Resolution 13 in July of 1967, General Vo Nguyen Giap, with his natural prudence, was hesitant to conduct a premature offensive without the possibility of winning. Giap believed that an American ground attack northward through the DMZ would be the logical next step for General Westmoreland after the Marine base camp Con-Thien was attacked by NVA large units in May 1967. He insisted that the defense of North Vietnam come first. But as commander in chief of the People’s Army, Giap was obligated to implement VWP decisions. Giap had dispersed his artillery and infantry large units along the northern bank of the Ben-Hai River to prevent such an attack and to make a diversion in order to reinforce troops and equipment to the COSVN through the Ho Chi Minh Trail in preparation for the TCK & TND. But he had to again test the reaction of the United States, before the VWP Politburo would make their final decisions.
Giap’s testing campaign was drawn up. Some American historians call it the First phase of the communist winter-spring campaign of 1967-1968. This testing campaign would therefore resolve two imperative demands: (1) to know exactly the Johnson administration’s will for the war in Vietnam, and (2) to know Westmoreland’s tactics and ability to deploy American troops over four military regions of South Vietnam. In September 1967, Giap launched forceful attacks on U.S. Marine positions along the DMZ with NVA large units, which were supported by artillery long range 130mm guns on the other side of the Ben-Hai River. Con-Thien base-camp was under fierce enemy assaults continuously from September 27. Attacks and counter-attacks were furious and both sides sustained enormous casualties. General Westmoreland declared that B-52 strikes on the NVA units at Con-Thien were devastating for the enemy and Con-Thien a “Dien-Bien-Phu in reverse”; which meant the General considered Con-Thien (and later Khe-Sanh) a second Dien-Bien-Phu, a “set-piece-outpost” staging “to wait for the enemy” to come, surround, and attack as he wanted. General Giap then would reason he could expect Westmoreland to continue operating in a defensive and reactive persistence instead of sending U.S. troops on the offensive across the DMZ or conducting a full scale invasion of North Vietnam. Westmoreland’s reaction at Con-Thien proved that the United States did not have the will to attack North Vietnam by ground forces. Hanoi leaders concluded that the Johnson administration responded as they had hoped. The first demand was solved.
The VWP Politburo grew confident in the TCK & TND campaign, issuing Party Resolution 14 in October 1967, while Giap’s testing campaign continued in South Vietnam. Giap opened three new fronts in three South Vietnamese military regions. Common opinion suggested this was done to test Westmoreland’s defense systems and to draw American large units from urban areas in order to prepare concrete plans for the future TCK & TND.
In South Vietnamese III Corps & Region, in the late September 1967, COSVN was ordered to send its 9th Division and a regiment of the 5th Division into Binh-Long, Phuoc-Long and Binh-Duong Provinces harassing the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division, or the Big Red One, and trying to overrun the advanced headquarters of the ARVN 5th Division at Song Be. In late October, these VC units tried to swamp U.S. Green Beret camp at Loc-Tan on international Route 7, 15 miles north of Loc-Ninh. At the same time, Loc-Ninh district headquarters, 75 miles northwest of Saigon, was attacked and overrun by other VC large forces. General Westmoreland immediately sent ten U.S. battalions into the region for several screening operations. A body count of nearly nine hundred VC was reported at the end of these operations and the 9th VC Division was pushed back to the Cambodian borderline. In II Corps & Region, in the first week of November 1967, four NVA infantry regiments plus a rocket artillery regiment approached Dak-To on National Road 14, 35 miles northwest of Kontum Province, and attempted to attack Dak-To and the U.S. Green Berets CIDG camps within the area. General Westmoreland moved the U.S. Army 4th Infantry Division to Dak-To, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, a brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, and six ARVN battalions to the vicinity. In mid–November, NVA artillery rockets hit the 4th Division’s base camp and the crowded airfield, destroying two C-130 and triggering a 1,000-ton explosion in the ammunition dump. At the same time, another NVA large force ambushed the reinforcements for two battalions of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. After 50 hours of impetuous fighting, the U.S. Airborne Brigade lost 124 killed and 347 wounded, the largest number of casualties since U.S. combat troops entered the battlefields in South Vietnam. The enemy casualties numbered 1,400 killed. These communist attacks in II and III Corps & Regions from September to November, were later explained by General Giap: “At the battles of Loc-Ninh and Dak-To in the Central Highlands in 1967, we were able to test our forces against defended positions. The next step was to move a larger force toward Khe-Sanh. Again the U.S. imperialists responded.”3
In I Corps & Region, in December 1967, more than three NVA divisions began to mass around U.S. Marine outpost at Khe-Sanh: the 304th Division, which had fought at Dien-Bien-Phu, commanded by General Hoang-Dan; the 320th “Delta” Division commanded by General Sung-Lam; the 325th “Gold Star” commanded by General Nguyen Huu An; and a regiment of the 324th Division plus several artillery battalions. These large units were under the command of General Tran Qui Hai, Assistant Chief of Staff of the North Vietnamese People’s Army, who was newly assigned as commander of the “Route 9 Front.” Thus, except for the 304th NVA Division, which had been at Khe-Sanh since the beginning of 1967, Giap moved to the region three more regular divisions. Later Giap disclosed his intentions: “Our main emphasis was to draw the American units away from the populated areas in the lowlands and, by doing so, make it easier for the Liberation Front to control the people. We deployed two divisions into the northern provinces of Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien, which drew in American troops from other areas.”4
A careful study of Giap’s deployment of NVA regular units around Khe-Sanh and the two northernmost provinces of the I Corps & Region, while leaving the lowlands for the Liberation Front units, made clear how the VWP would conduct the war in their offensive campaign TCK & TND. The VWP would give the Liberation Front Army, or VC units, then built up to regimental size and divisional size, the job of attacking South Vietnamese cities, towns, and military installations. The NVA regular large units would confront the U.S. forces at the border, on the DMZ, or within Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien Provinces. Later, U.S. military intelligence discovered that Giap had kept more than a corps-sized unit on the other side of the DMZ to prevent an American invasion of the North and as a counter-attack force. In the end of December, Giap completed his dispersal of NVA regular divisions along the DMZ and around Khe-Sanh and attempted to send other divisions to infiltrate deeply into Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien.
As the enemy built up at Khe-Sanh, General Westmoreland, believing that the climactic showdown of the war would take place mainly in the northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, planned for a massive and complicated concentration of American troops in I Corps & Region. In late November 1967, Westmoreland began to pull the best American units from II and III Corps & Regions and move them to the I Corps & Region, especially in Quang-Tri and the DMZ. By mid–December, Westmoreland had 50 U.S. battalions in place in the I Corps Region. He tripled the Marine defensive forces at Khe-Sanh Garrison by sending in five more Marine battalions and a Vietnamese Ranger battalion, and placed them under the command of an expert Marine officer, Colonel David Lownds. The general also reinforced a great number of U.S. Army artillery 175mm field guns to fire-bases Calu, Rockpile, and Carroll while preparing a careful aerial firepower plan, code-named Niagara, to support Khe-Sanh in case of an enemy attack like Dien-Bien-Phu. In mid–December, Westmoreland canceled projected operations in the II Corps & Region’s Central Highlands and ordered the 1st Cavalry Division to move into Thua-Thien Province with a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Before that, a brigade of the South Korean Blue Dragon Division and two best ARVN large units, the Airborne Division and the Marine Division had been sent to Quang-Tri Province. Robert Pisor, a war correspondent in Vietnam, commented critically that in the last week of January 1968, General Westmoreland had in these northernmost provinces of South Vietnam a “half of all the American combat troops of South Vietnam. But while Westmoreland was moving tens of thousands of combat troops to the north, Vo Nguyen Giap was moving tens of thousands of combat troops to the south for the boldest stroke of the war: the Tet Offensive. Khe-Sanh was a feint, a magician’s snap of the fingers to freeze the audience’s eyes.”5 Many military writers did not think Khe-Sanh was a second “Dien-Bien-Phu,” but at that time all Washington authorities’ eyes were on Khe-Sanh.
Later, General Westmoreland explained his decision of to move American combat troops to I Corps & Region: “Some have claimed that the enemy instigated a series of border fights, Khe-Sanh in particular, to draw my forces away from the cities. I believe the opposite was true. The attack on the cities, and the earlier attacks at Loc-Ninh at III Corps in October 1967 and Dak-To in II Corps in November 1967 were designed strategically to divert our attention away from the vulnerable northern provinces of I Corps.”6
In reality, in conducting the TCK & TND campaign in South Vietnam in January 1968, North Vietnamese communists hoped not only to gain a tactical military victory over the U.S. forces at Khe-Sanh or on the DMZ, but also to gain a strategic political victory over South Vietnam. This would assist them in future peace-talks as envisioned by Ho Chi Minh’s “fighting while negotiating” with the purpose to “push the Americans out of Vietnam.” If they could overrun the U.S. Marines at Khe-Sanh, it would be a second “Dien-Bien-Phu.” Even if they could not defeat U.S. Marines at Khe-Sanh, with their attacks on Saigon and all over South Vietnamese provinces and cities, they would show their ability to wage a protracted war. They would win a political and psychological victory coming to the negotiating table for a “neutral government” solution in South Vietnam with the sharing of power between the current South Vietnamese government and the National Liberation Front. Capturing the two northernmost provinces of South Vietnam was another possibility of their offensive campaign. Accordingly, the VWP ordered Tran Bach Dang, a high-ranking political operator of the COSVN to make secret contacts with the U.S. embassy in Saigon for a “political solution.” The VWP Resolution 14 stated: “The upcoming General Offensive & General Uprising will be a period, a process, of intensive and complicated strategic offensives by the military, political and diplomatic means … a process in which we will attack and advance on the enemy continuously both militarily and politically as well as a process in which the enemy will ferociously counter-attack in order to wrest back and reoccupy positions that would have been lost.”7
General Vo Nguyen Giap said: “Waging war is not easy, you know…. We chose Tet because, in war, you must seize the propitious moment, when time and space are propitious.”8 Tet 1968 was a propitious moment for the communists to open fire; 1968 was also a general election year in the United States. The Communist Offensive Campaign, or TCK & TND, was then realized under two planning phases:
• Phase I: From January to March 1968. Targets of the NVA regular units: U.S. Marine garrison Khe-Sanh on the western highlands of the DMZ, U.S. Marine base camp at Con-Thien in the center, ARVN Marine base camp at Gio-Linh in the lowlands east coast, and Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien capital cities. Targets of the Liberation Front Army, or VC units: Saigon and several provincial cities, districts and ARVN installations, including the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
• Phase II: NVA regular large sized units would cross the DMZ and assault the U.S. and ARVN forces after the General Uprising of the South Vietnamese people had begun. This plan could not be realized because there was not a general uprising of the people in the South and after the defeat of both the NVA in I Corps & Region and the VC in Saigon and other military regions. There were only several inconsistent attacks on Saigon and some provinces in May 1968.
The Communist Phase I Offensive had two stages. First, at dawn on January 21, 1968, two NVA divisions ferociously attacked Khe-Sanh Garrison. Con-Thien and Gio-Linh were also hit. Particularly, at Khe-Sanh, the NVA long-range artillery shelled the defensive forces with devastating accuracy. As Khe-Sanh was besieged, the U.S. media poured into the garrison. Their news, photos, and televised images of the battle began to psychologically attack the American populace day after day. The communists attacked Khe-Sanh but every American family was hurt. In Washington, President Johnson was deeply worried, not only by the prospect of losing Khe-Sanh but also by polls of the American public showing support for the war declining and the anti-war movement gaining momentum. As the 5,500 U.S. Marines and 1,100 ARVN rangers were pinned down inside the bunkers and barbed wire at Khe-Sanh, in Washington, a Gallup poll showed that fifty percent of these polled disapproved of the president’s war conduct and only thirty-five percent approved. The president said: “This is the decisive time in Vietnam.”9
Part of the significance of the Khe-Sanh battle to the whole Second Vietnam war lay with its impact on the general public in America. Before the communists attacked Khe-Sanh, a majority of Americans knew little about the war in South Vietnam and some did not even know where Vietnam was. After Ambassador Bunker arrived in South Vietnam to carry out Johnson’s plan of de-escalating American involvement, the public believed that their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers and other relatives would come home before Christmas 1967. General Westmoreland convinced them, when he returned to the United States in late November and told the National Press Club, that the war in Vietnam would come to the end with a visible American victory, declaring: “We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view. The enemy’s hopes are bankrupt.”10 Vietnam-Khe-Sanh had come to the American minds first, before Vietnam-Saigon. Then, Khe-Sanh was the disastrous first shock to them and the first catastrophe that morally defeated President Johnson, his aides and his supporters.
Hanoi leaders certainly perceived this demoralization of the American people and its impact upon the Johnson administration. Under these circumstances, they knew Washington could not think of invading North Vietnam, except to increase aerial bombardment in the North. They were confident enough to launch the Tet-Offensive, the second stage of their Phase I Offensive.
If Khe-Sanh was not a surprise, the Tet Offensive, according to public opinion, was a real surprise for all. It came during the time when all attention was focused on Khe-Sanh. The Tet Offensive erupted throughout South Vietnam with more than 100,000 NVA and Liberation Army troops, or Viet-Cong units, of which 80 percent were new NVA infiltration troops. They began their first attacks by targeting Kontum, Pleiku, Qui-Nhon. Ban-Me-Thuot and Nha-Trang, in II Corps & Region on January 30, 1968. The next day, January 31, New Year’s Day, every major South Vietnamese town, city, and U.S. and RVNAF installation came under attack. Among the hundred of targets, Saigon, Long Binh, Bien-Hoa, and Hue were the main objectives. If Saigon was the center of political, diplomatic, and administrative activities, Long-Binh was the heart of U.S. armed forces in South Vietnam with its materiel and supply depots and ammunition dumps. Bien-Hoa concentrated the majority of U.S. air-powers with its strategic airbase and the ARVN III Corps. Hue was the symbolic cultural, religious, and spiritual center of ancient Vietnam.
Saigon was hit by the 7th NVA Division, the 9th VC Division, 5 separate regiments, 12 regional battalions, and 11 special sabotage groups. The latter special units would be the main force to attack important installations in Saigon. At the same time, the U.S. II Field Forces headquarters and the 3rd Ordnance at Long Binh, Bien-Hoa, were attacked by the VC 5th Division. On the same day, Hue was overwhelmed by 5,000 NVA troops of the NVA 5th and 6th Regiments and two sapper battalions, which were reinforced the next day by a regiment of the NVA 325C Division and a regiment of the NVA 324B Division: sixteen battalions in sum. The only installations the communists failed to capture were the headquarters of the ARVN 1st Division and the U.S. MACV compound.
Hanoi and COSVN used only three divisions and a number of local battalions to attack Saigon-Long-Binh and Bien-Hoa, a combined target that was tenfold larger than Hue, on which they used two well-trained NVA divisions for the attack. By General Westmoreland’s estimation, the logical explanation was that the offense in the new capital (Saigon) and its vicinity was a political demonstration of their military capability while the offense on Hue was a prime attack to seize the old capital to form a “revolutionary government” of the Liberation Front to further their political aims. Hanoi put hundreds of other provincial and district cities and towns in South Vietnam under attack, perhaps to incite a general uprising of the people.
In Saigon, many important installations were attacked, such as Tan Son Nhut Air Base, MACV compound headquarters, the RVNAF headquarters, the Presidential Palace, the National Police headquarters, the Vietnamese Navy headquarters, and Saigon broadcasting station. But the most important target of the communists was the U.S. Embassy in the heart of Saigon. Everywhere, in the first minutes of the communist Tet Offensive the gloom was made complete. MACV and RVNAF intelligence did not estimate that the communists could coordinate a total attack on the first day of the lunar New Year and get onto the U.S. embassy grounds or South Vietnam’s National Palace. When the attack came President Thieu was not in the palace. At the U.S. Embassy, Ambassador Bunker was suddenly awakened at 2:30 A.M. and taken to a safe place while the fighting clashed at the main gate. Meanwhile, communist sappers blew a hole in a side wall and penetrated into the compound. Gunfights broke out within the embassy grounds and U.S. Marines had to reinforce the Embassy. For hours, the press, particularly the American reporters, observed the fighting. That day, the headlines of every major newspaper across America reported that the U.S. Embassy in Saigon was under communist siege. It was a huge shock for Washington and American public. But the American press was hugely mistaken. As General Westmoreland observed: “The enemy had attacked in force and he was going to be defeated. But the press was unbelieving. The character of the press reports was doom and gloom.”11
From the DMZ to the Mekong Delta, the U.S. and RVNAF forces met with every NVA and VC major unit and everywhere the fighting was fierce. Everywhere, these communist units were held in place, crushed to pieces, or pushed back with in total defeat and with enormous losses of manpower, guns and materiel. An American general later summarized:
Main Force NVA and indigenous VC units had attacked our forces. The strikes were often suicidal, and the enemy suffered terrible carnage in the face of our superior firepower and air supremacy. Near Pleiku, the bodies of virtually an entire NVA infantry battalion lay on the battlefield when the conflict was over. There was one major exception to this. Hue, the old fortified city on the Perfume River in the extreme north of South Vietnam, had been taken and was still in the hands of the North Vietnamese forces.12
On February 11, 1968, the Communist Phase I General Offensive and General Uprising, or the Tet Offensive, was almost over, except at Hue and Khe-Sanh. Hanoi leaders expected that a general attack on all over south Vietnam would lead to a “general uprising” of the population; the bulk of South Vietnamese people would join communist units and dissolve the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN would disintegrate and it troops would defect to their side. This course did not happen. On the contrary, when the fights occurred, everywhere people supported the ARVN troops and ARVN units at every level fought with great courage and distinction. Later, General Westmoreland gave credit: “Contrary to popular opinion, the Tet Offensive was the main Vietnamese fight. The South Vietnamese Army, other members of the South Vietnamese armed forces, Regional Force [RF] and popular Force [PF] militias, and the national police deserve the major share of credit for turning back the offensive, for they and the South Vietnamese people took the brunt of the attack.”13 The Liberation Front Army, or VC units, suffered the biggest of the casualties with more than 32,000 killed and 5,000 captured.
In the meantime, the battles at Hue and Khe-Sanh continued and seemed to be at a stalemate for President Johnson, particularly after the CBS News anchorman, Walter Cronkite, the most trusted figure in the American media and a significant shaper of public opinion, came to Hue in February, observed the battle and turned against the war.
In mid–February, after a meeting with President Thieu, General Westmoreland established a combined field army operational headquarters comprising of the U.S. Third Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF) and the Vietnamese I Corps & Region to retake the old capital. The combined headquarters was placed under the command of General Creighton Abrams, deputy Commander of MACV. On February 25, 1968, the battle at Hue came to an end when units of the 1st ARVN Infantry Division placed the Vietnamese national flag at the top of the Citadel. The communist Tet Offensive was completely over. But during the roughly three weeks they occupied Hue, the communists executed and buried alive more than 3,800 people, including government officials, ARVN officers, NCOs, soldiers, policemen, civil servants, priests, and young men of military age. They killed everyone they suspected of working for the South Vietnamese government. The barbarity of these atrocious and inhumane killings revealed the true face of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communist Party’s leaders.
Ironically, many serious observers thought that Khe-Sanh “was but a brief diversionary feint for the surprise Tet-Offensive.” When the Tet Offensive faded in after a short time, the battle at Khe-Sanh continued to the end of March. The most decisive weapons General Westmoreland used to defeat Giap’s forces were sensors, jet fighter strikes and B-52 bombardments. New wave sensors precisely registered every large NVA movement of men and vehicles approaching or massing around U.S. Marine positions. Jet fighters and B-52 were called to intercept immediately with precise destruction of requested targets. Colonel Lownds, commander of the defensive forces at Khe-Sanh, summarized: “Sensors had come into being and when they went to wild where I figured the enemy would come from. We took out our maps and figured out where the enemy would assemble. We’d wait until he had closed the assembly area because we wanted to get them all. The B-52 strikes would be a ‘godsend,’ miraculous thing. It’s almost scary when you think of it. You don’t even see them but, boy, the bombs sure come down right on target.”14 Some said that Giap was not stupid to hit Khe-Sanh. General Giap wanted to hit it and overrun it. Khe-Sanh was only saved by its architect and creator, General Westmoreland, and by its heroes, the U.S. Marines and ARVN Rangers, plus the power of American advanced high-tech detectors and air supremacy. On March 25, 1968, General Westmoreland decided to relieve Combat Base Khe Sanh and open Route 9 by the operation code-named “Pegasus.” The operation started on April 1st, 1968, with a force composed of the U.S. 1st Calvary Division and two Marine regiments (the 1st and 26th) in combination with the ARVN 3rd Airborne Brigade. After several encounters with the NVA 9-Front’s units along Route 9, U.S. and ARVN units under the command of Brigadier General J.J. Tolson completely cleared up this route from Calu to Khe Sanh and Lang Vei. NVA units around Khe Sanh were eliminated or pushed back to Laotian territory with huge casualties estimated to be from 12,000 to 15,000. However, while their casualties were certainly enormous, they were quietly buried under the dense forest of the borderline highlands and in the memories of their commanders.
To sum up, the Communist General Offensive and General Uprising both in the cities and at the frontiers, Khe-Sanh and the DMZ, was militarily a total defeat for the North Vietnamese Communist Party and General Vo Nguyen Giap himself. However, this offensive campaign psychologically and politically defeated President Johnson. General Westmoreland also committed a severe mistake by requesting an additional 206,000 combat troops for Vietnam although victory was apparently in his hands. Had he not been defeated by the American media he would have been a great hero of the United States. But President Johnson was defeated by a public opinion that was shaped by the fourth power of the American democracy. On February 27, 1968, at the White House, President Johnson followed attentively the CBS News broadcasting the comment of Walter Cronkite on the war in South Vietnam. Cronkite said: “It is simply clear to this reporter that the only rational way out … will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”15 Cronkite had passed one night at the field headquarters of General Abrams and said that the battle at Hue was “a World War II battlefield.”
The day after hearing from Cronkite, President Johnson ordered his newly assigned secretary of defense, Clark Clifford, to form immediately a Tet-inquiry “Task Force” to be operative on March 1 when Clifford took office in the Pentagon. Clifford made clear that the Tet inquiry resulted from General Westmoreland’s request for a huge number of additional troops for Vietnam. On March 10, the New York Times disclosed Westmoreland’s request. This news shocked the nation. On March 19, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for an immediate review by Congress of U.S. war policy in Vietnam. That same day Senator Robert Kennedy declared his presidential candidacy. The Defense Department Task Force had finished the Tet inquiry and Clifford claimed that the Pentagon had no plan to win the war; that the Vietnamese communists could withstand a war of attrition and if the United States sent an additional 200,000 troops to Vietnam it might send more; nobody knew how long the war would last. He decided to convince the president to change U.S. policy in Vietnam. Clifford had supported Johnson’s war policy, now turned against it. The hawk became a dove.
On March 22, President Johnson formally announced that General William C. Westmoreland was promoted to army chief of staff and was to leave Vietnam by June. General Creighton William Abrams was going to replace Westmoreland as commander of U.S. MACV (COMUSMACV). After a couple of weeks working with Clifford, on March 31, 1968, President Johnson addressed the nation that he had decided to freeze troop levels, limit the air war against North Vietnam, and seek a negotiated peace. Finally, the President announced that he would not run again for the presidency. He told the people:
With America’s sons in the fields far away and with America’s future under challenge here at home; with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes, or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.16
The Communist Tet Offensive was the turning point of the war and President Johnson did “the best he could” to defend democracy. But in the end he did as Walter Cronkite and Clark Clifford wanted, pursuing peace talks with North Vietnam. This was the fifth paradox of the United States.
United Nations secretary-general U Thant and the French government arranged peace talks that began in Paris on May 12, 1968, mainly between the United States and North Vietnam, with the presence of South Vietnam and the National Liberation Front. In the same month, the communists launched the Phase II Offensive against Saigon and several South Vietnamese provinces in order to demonstrate their power and so to gain an advantage at the negotiating table. This time, the NVA regular units played a key role since tens of thousands of VC deserters came over to the South Vietnamese side after the Tet Offensive. This communist offensive was quickly crushed by U.S. and ARVN forces.
ARVN 81st Special Airborne troops counter-attack in Gia-Dinh, Saigon Special Military Zone, during the Communist 1968 Tet Offensive. Courtesy Nguyen Cau and Sao Bien.
Later, General Frederic C. Weyand, the last MACV Commander and the U.S. general most trusted and admired in South Vietnamese intellectual and military circles, described the communist Tet 1968 Offensive campaign:
First, by attacking everywhere at once, they [the communists] fragmented their forces and laid themselves open to defeat in detail. Second, and most important, they believed their own propaganda and thought there would be a “great general uprising” wherein the South Vietnamese people would flock to their banner. There was a great general uprising all right, but it was against them rather than for them. The vast majority of South Vietnamese people wanted nothing to do with VC. During the entire course of the war there were never any mass defections by the South Vietnamese. But it is interesting to note that in the aftermath of the Tet-Offensive more than 150,000 VC deserters came over to our side.”17
After President Johnson gave up on the war, some said that the United States had been stabbed in the back from within, possibly by the media and the anti-war movement. Some historians asserted that the lack of American will and a politically defective policy finally turned the American people against the war. The real battle Johnson had fought and lost was not the communist Tet Offensive in South Vietnam, it was the conquest of the hearts and minds of his own people.