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Tet Offensive Research Paper

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In 1968, North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam during Tet, an agreed upon time of peace. This attack was known as the Tet Offensive, aimed to separate the South Vietnamese from their American allies during a time of weakness. The violation of the understood ceasefire was brutal on both sides of the battle ground. After the Offensive was over, it left a pessimistic outlook in Americans due to the handling of the war and the major casualties caused. While both the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese, along with their allies, took serious damages during the attacks, there was no clear winner.
The goal of the Tet Offensive was clear: to “separate the South’s ‘puppet’ regime from U.S. military resources” (Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War 1). …show more content…

“The Tet Offensive created an atmosphere of gloom and uncertainty within the United States’s halls of power.” For the American media, there was an “apparent ‘credibility gap’ of the administration,” which resulted in “frustration” for the public and continued a decline for support of the war that started in the year prior. During February 1968 immediately after the initial strike, support for American participation in the Vietnam War was “74 percent” but “dropped to 54 percent” by March of the same year. Frustration about intervention grew even more as the number of American casualties grew in the wake of a war with uncertain victory. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “approval ratings sank to 24 percent in March,” and he eventually ended his reelection campaign (Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War 3). By the time that Johnson announced he would no longer be running for reelection, nearly 4000 Americans had died in combat, as well as 58,000 enemies and 14,000 allies. Secretary of State Dean Acheson reported to Johnson that “victory in Vietnam was not feasible within the limits of public tolerance” (New York Times 2). With disapproval rates soaring, Johnson was forced to reduce American involvement in the war by “rejecting major troop reinforcements, reducing the bombing, [and] gradually shifting the burden of the fighting to the South Vietnamese.” Through his actions, the President “hoped to salvage his policy...until the end

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Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of Sources The purpose of this investigation is to explore the question: How did the Tet Offensive change American public opinion on the Vietnam War? The focus of the investigation will be on the years 1965-1970 in order to allow for analysis of American public opinion from the beginning of American involvement to the years following the Tet Offensive. Sources analyzing the Tet Offensive as a whole and American public opinion on the Vietnam War will be used to accurately determine the effects of the Tet Offensive on American public opinion. The first source that will be evaluated is the book “The Tet Offensive,” which was written by Marc Gilbert and William Head in 1996.

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