“At Tet they infiltrated right
through our porous lines and attacked some forty cities. They
abandoned the countryside where they were doing very well, and boy
did they get creamed in the cities. For once, the enemy, who we
could not find out there in the triple canopy jungle, who could
control his loses by deciding to cut and run every time we got after
him, for once we could find him. He was right there shooting at us
in our own headquarters, and the cost to him was enormous militarily."
- Robert Komer (1968)
Indeed,
the Viet Cong suffered major losses militarily during the Tet
offensive. However, according to General Vo Nguyen Giap, the VC's
purpose was not solely militaristic, but political as well. And
politically, they managed to tear apart the very fabric that
sustained the U.S. in Vietnam – the general trust and support of
the American people. Endless scenes of grotesque violence and chaos
invaded the living rooms of millions of Americans in their homes each
night during the period of the Tet offensive, creating a political
blunder in the perception that things were out of control in Vietnam.
Moreover, the
timing of the Tet offensive could not have been worse for the public
perception of the war. Shortly after the “Pueblo incident”, and
amongst growing tensions in Berlin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Earle Wheeler, suggested calling up the reserves.
General Westmoreland saw an opportunity in calling up the reserves to
acquire 200,000 new ground troops for duty in Vietnam. This request,
coupled with the images of the Tet offensive, must have seemed pretty
ominous to the American people.
Following
the Tet offensive, popular CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite deemed
the war “unwinnable." LBJ is reported to have said in response, "If
I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America.” The fabric had been
torn.
“[The enemy] fatally weakened us
at the center of our political structure." - Robert Komer (1968)
