The Tet Offensive: A Case Study

President’s Kennedy’s assignation on November 22nd 1963, seemed to set off a series of events that would shape the conflict in Vietnam for several administrations to come. Although the Vietnam War was just one piece of the complex “Cold War” it played an important role in shaping politics at home as well as abroad. President had increased the presence of advisors to South Vietnam under his administration. Although he increased troop presence, he didn’t want to fully commit to a ground war even against the advice from his administrators. “Despite a united front among his advisers, Kennedy responded to the call for troops in Vietnam with an emphatic ‘no.’ “The war in Vietnam could be won only so long as it was their war,” he told an aide privately. “If it were ever converted into a white man’s war, we would lose.” (Santow, 2013). Unfortunately, Kennedy would not live to see the increase of advisors evolving into a full blown escalation due to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Without Kennedy to deescalate tensions, then President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to use the incident to escalate “The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the …show more content…
This is obviously related to the presence of American involvement on the side of the South Vietnamese which began after the Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution passed by Congress. Even though the Tet Offensive was not a military success it was definitely a political one. It changed the narrative that President Johnson and his top aides were telling the American people about winning the war and that the end of war was on the horizon. “Westmoreland requested more than 200,000 new troops in order to mount an effective counteroffensive, an escalation that many Americans saw as an act of desperation”. This event is often stated as the turning point of the war, that would follow with bloodshed on American college campuses and a divided American public during the next