Tet, Chicago and Nixon
1. Tet
a. Ho Chi Minh made the decision to depart from his unending war of attrition that had claimed the lives of 16,000 American soldiers and had left tens of thousands more wounded.
b. He authorized an enormous series of attacks throughout South Vietnam. Viet Cong infiltrators and insurgents attacked hundreds of sites including the American Embassy in S.Vietnam’s capital, Saigon in January of 1968.
c. American television carried live footage of the explosions, fires, executions, snipers, smoke, panic, bloodshed and corpses into the homes of millions of viewers.
d. Tet came on the heels of a public relations campaign authorized by LBJ that had confidently predicted American victory. “The enemy has met his Master in the field, and recognizes that he cannot prevail in this fight,” is how the President put it.
e. General Westmoreland pointed to the enormous “body counts” of dead VC as evidence that the Communist forces were being ground down and decimated by the awesome American firepower.
f. The Tet Offensive met a crushing military defeat. 40,000 Communist soldiers died in the offensive. 1,100 American soldiers were killed and 2,300 ARVN troops.
g. The Tet Offensive was an enormous propaganda victory. It shocked the American electorate and dispelled belief that the war was being won.
h. Many Americans now came to the conclusion that the war was far from decided, that the communist forces were much stronger and more resilient than had been acknowledged by government leaders and that there was “no light at the end of the tunnel.”
2. The Home Front
a. Walter Cronkite, a legendary newsman, told the American people that a bloody stalemate existed in Vietnam. The military struggle had no end in sight.
b. With a presidential election looming in November of 1968, LBJ found himself confronting challenges from his own party. Eugene McCarthy an anti-war senator from Minnesota announced his candidacy. So too, did NY Senator Robert Kennedy.
c. Johnson’s advisors now told him that “Vietnam was a sinkhole.” The more troops America threw into the conflict, the more troops N.Vietnam sent into battle. The casualties continued to mount with Americans growing disillusioned with the purpose of the war while the government of Hanoi expressed determination to fight on without respite.
d. The bombing of Vietnam continued and Johnson, worn down by his 5 years in office, too tired to continue, announced that he would not seek reelection in November.
3. 1968 and Murder
a. On April 4, 1968 a sniper shot and killed Martin Luther King on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. Race riots followed in 130 American cities. 20,000 people were arrested.
b. King had been a strong and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. Black soldiers accounted for 12% of the American fighting strength in the conflict and 24% of the killed and wounded.
c. The murder of Dr. King had decapitated the Civil Rights Movement and deprived it of its iconic leader. A void was created that no other figure could fill.
d. In June of 1968, Robert Kennedy, the strongest Democratic candidate for president, was shot to death by a deranged Arab nationalist.
e. Overseas, the Soviet Union crushed an attempt by Czechoslovakia to institute “socialism with a human face” as Soviet tanks rumbled through the streets of the Czech capital, Prague.
f. Student riots exploded in Marseille, Tokyo, Bologna, Mexico City and in the United States.
g. At Columbia University, radical students in the SDS led by Mark Rudd took over 5 administrative offices. They hung pictures of Marx, Che Guevera, and Malcolm X.
h. Police took the campus back using tear gas and clubs. The action at Columbia spawned other student protests. Between 1968-1970 there were 150 violent demonstrations on college campuses across the USA.
i. The student violence divided Americans. Many blue collar citizens were angry with the privileged students. President Nixon would characterize American soldiers in Vietnam as “heroes” and student radicals as “bums.”
j. When 4 students were shot to death at Kent State University in 1970 the father of one dead woman bitterly stated, “my daughter was not a bum.”
4. Nixon and His Secret Plan To End the War
a. The Democratic Convention of 1968 was held in Chicago. It was a disastrous event marred by violence between student protesters and police.
b. The convention chose Hubert Humphrey to run against Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Nixon won the presidency by a narrow margin in the popular vote and 301-191 in the Electoral College.
c. 1969 was the year of Woodstock and Easy Rider. It was also the year of the Stonewall Inn Riots in Greenwich Village that led to the rise of the Gay Rights movement.
d. Nixon was a gifted strategic thinker and a shrewd politician. He saw Vietnam as one piece of an international chess game.
e. His primary goal was to defuse the Cold War. He believed he could do this by reshaping the American relationship with the Soviet Union.
f. To create change he needed to exploit the tension that existed between the Soviet Union and China.
g. In 1972, Nixon – a Cold War Warrior, Eisenhower’s Vice-President, flew to Beijing and was given a warm welcome. The visit caused worry in Hanoi and in Moscow.
h. That same year he concluded a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviets, slowing the arms race. Meanwhile he had begun trying to extricate the US from Vietnam in a strange way – He widened and intensified the war.