TET offense attacks
Introduction
The tet’s offensive, however, showed everyone the opposite of what the government had transmitted. The Viet Cong, stronger and more coordinated than ever, had surprised with an attack on US troops in several southern Vietnam points during the New Year of the TET, a time when previous years had respected a time of truce. The attack, thus, left images that captured chaos, terror, the most raw of war. Many innocent people were killed and the cities were destroyed.
Developing
The photographs, documentaries and reports that arrived after the massacre caused public opinion to decrease their support for war and government as never before since the beginning of the conflict. Manifestations and movements against war spread throughout the country and the government was criticized for their participation in it. On television, even journalists, some as well -known as presenter Walter Cronkite, reported what happened from subjectivity.
In fact, after Cronkite had finished his report on the tet’s offensive that "the war had been a bloody stagnation," Johnson turned to his advisors and said "everything is over," Hallin. He was fully aware that if one of the most influential men of the moment had made such an assessment of what happened, it meant that he had definitely lost public opinion. To try to paint American administration and army as "the good" and win the public’s support again.
The Government ordered some propaganda films and documentaries in which the courage of the military was showed against the North Vietnamese murderers. From this era, indeed, it is Rambo movie by Ted Kotcheff or Vietnam! Vietnam!, of John Ford (without good this was not shown to the public until much later, because by 1971, when it was completed, it turned out to be obsolete and quite shameful for the government).
They believed that with these films they would bring people closer to another point of view on the war, more patriot and close to the horrors that the guerrillas made the soldiers pass. Far from getting it, they only added more firewood. Thus, many historians consider the tet offensive as the decisive event in the Vietnam War, the one in which it was evident not only that the United States was not going to be able to reduce the communist threat, but that event in which the government He completely lost public support.
conclusion
In 1971 the famous Pentagon files were leaked, where all the inconsistencies and lies of the State were fully detailed and that completely revolutionized public opinion. From here, with Nixon as president, the administration had no choice but to start the path of the vietnamization of war and the gradual withdrawal of the troops, which ended in 1973. In 1975, Vietnam del Sur lost to Viet Cong, which in the end made many Americans ask "worth it?".
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